


The Way Up

by barbex



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Adventure, Discovery, Gen, Quarians, and a bit discouraged, just a slow writer, not on hiatus, or maybe a bit on hiatus, quarian headcanon - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-01-17 15:30:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 54,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1392838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barbex/pseuds/barbex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The history of the quarians, according to my headcanon. How did they end up in those suits, why do their eyes glow? After the end of the Reaper War, Tali discovers secrets on Rannoch and asks Liara for help. Tali and Liara as history nerds and many original quarian characters. This is a story of adventure and discovery, a look into quarian history. Deviates very much from canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Professor Tali

**Author's Note:**

> Here is the idea:
> 
> It is ridiculous that nobody knows what quarians look like if they have only been living in their suits for 300 years. That is not a long time, we have photographs from 300 years ago and we are hardly as technical as the quarians. And why are the masks not transparent? Why have they not learned to adapt their immune system? Why do their eyes glow? So many questions, so little answers. This calls for extensive headcanons!
> 
> Prepare for about 14 chapters, most of them have already been written during NaNoWriMo last November. I'm trying to answer all the questions in my little story.

"Hello Tali, how nice to hear from you."

Liara's face was slightly distorted over the long distance comm. Major comm systems were still down after the galaxy wide Reaper war. Surprise was clearly visible on her face, Tali did not speak with the not-quite-so-shadowy Shadow Broker often. While they had worked well together and were connected by that special Normandy-bond, they never developed the tight friendship as some of the other crew had. Tali had to admit that she did not even contact Garrus as much as she should have even though she considered Garrus one of her closest friends.

"Hello Liara, are you well?"

She smiled and was glad that Liara could actually see it. She only wore her hood and the protective faceplate when she went outside, to shield herself from the harsh sunlight on Rannoch. Inside of her small, portable home, she kept it off. It had taken almost a year for the immunoboosters to work and she still sometimes panicked when her fingers touched her skin and grieves on her face.

Her room was dark, the only light coming from the terminal and the starlight that filtered through the windows. She had taken off her hooded coat and the bioluminescent lines on the sides of her face and down her neck shone brightly. Their nervous pulse gave the walls a slightly purple tinge. Tali took a breath, she wasn't even sure why she was so nervous. Even though she just wanted to ask Liara a simple favor, she still felt like this would be a turning point for her. Liara looked back at her, waiting patiently in that serene asari way that had driven Shepard crazy all the time.

"I am quite well, thank you," she said with a smile, looking incredibly beautiful. "Now, what can I do for you?"

"I have found something, here, on Rannoch, underground."

"Have you turned to archeology?" Liara asked with wide eyes.

"I may have, a little," Tali's lines began to pulse in bright luminescence again. She felt quite embarrassed to talk to Liara, who had been an archeologist for a hundred years, about this silly hobby of hers. "I have scanned an area on Rannoch that showed traces of early settlements. When I extended the scans into the ground, I found even more."

"I didn't know you were interested in archeology," Liara said with a surprised smile. "Do you want to investigate that site?"

"Yes, I do but..." Tali's hand went to the top of her head, where her hair had grown quite a lot from the stubble it had been under the hood for so many years. Even though she knew it was there and could touch it, it was still an incredible sensation. "I'm not an archaeologist or a historian. In fact, no quarian is. We have no historians, hardly any documents about our past. We never cared about history, about the past. Quarians move forward, we don't look back.”

Liara took a sharp breath as she shook her head. "So much knowledge lost!"

"So of course, we also don't have any archeologists," Tali said. "We know how to scan and collect data but we don't know what to make of it."

"I see,” Liara nodded, “So you need a team of experts in excavation and in historical interpretations." Her concentration shifted to a side terminal where she typed in various commands.

Tali nodded, "I thought I'd ask you because you are the only archaeologist I know."

The asari turned back to the screen with a warm smile.

"I will gladly help you Tali. I probably won't be able to come and dig myself, although I sometimes long for that..." she trailed off, looking a bit sad for a second but quickly shook it off. "But I know of a team of experts that would love to work on that. There is not much demand for archeologists at the moment, with all the rebuilding going on." She returned to typing.

"I can't pay them much, in fact, my funds are very limited. The university has only been open for half a year and the history branch is brand new. I don't get a lot of funding."

" _'I'_?" Liara looked up with amusement playing on her lips, "Did I hear that correctly, you are the head of the history department at the University of Rannoch?"

"The Shepard's University of Lekon on Rannoch," Tali sighed. "Yes, I am." She twitched as her fingers touched the skin on her face, covering up the embarrassing light pulses. "Shepard once told me that the humans have a saying: 'Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it'. I felt like it was time to look at our history, to learn from that so I spoke to the head of the university about it. Ten minutes later, I was the head of the department. I got an asari matriarch for galactic history..."

"Matriarch Telvisia. I had wondered why she moved to Rannoch," Liara murmured and Tali decided not to wonder how much Liara knew about everybody.

"Yes, she is teaching several classes. I even got Samara to agree to come in and give a few guest lectures."

Liara looked very impressed. "Oh, I might even visit to hear that lecture, if I can and the head of the history department would allow me to do so."

Tali laughed for the first time in days. She had been under so much stress lately that she had neglected to stay in touch with friends. "Of course, Liara, you can visit the... my department anytime. Maybe you could also visit the dig site, for old times sake?"

"Yes..." Liara stared off into the distance, a wistful smile on her lips. "Yes, I might do that. It would probably do me well, to touch dirt again." Her eyes focused again and she smiled at Tali. "I also forwarded you the names and contacts of a few teachers and teaching experts that might be beneficial for your department." Her omni-tool pinged and she brought up the message, "Ah yes, Dr. Deltreva and her team have agreed to help you in your excavation, quite enthusiastically so."

"But I can't pay them..."

"Don't worry about it. I have set up a sponsorship for the project and I promise you that it will be funded," Liara said ominously, sounding like what one would imagine the fearsome Shadow Broker to be. Then, she smiled at Tali and as quickly as it had come, the fearsome persona dissipated. "So what has you so excited about that site? If you can tell me..."

Tali grinned, "As if you wouldn't find out anyway."

Liara smiled even more.

"I found underground structures, " Tali said, "artificial structures. There used to be caves under the mountains of Gelldre Kah, but they collapsed about a thousand years ago, according to my readings. But my scans found an area that is still intact and it’s filled with structures. It looks like buildings on stilts, connected by a web of bridges."

Liara looked very thoughtful. "My father told me of stories about the quarians and that they used to live underground. I never believed her, there are no documents about it anywhere. But I also never believed her when she said that quarians have hair. Now look at you and your beautiful hair!"

"Thank you." Tali felt her skin warm and the walls reflected her bright luminescence with purple pulses. Her hand went to the short, dark waves. After having been regulated for most of her life, her hair was still very slow in its growing.

"It really looks lovely, Tali and I love to be able to see your face. Do you not need the hooded mask anymore?"

Tali picked up the modified faceplate and showed it to Liara.  

"Only to protect me from the sunlight. See? It's not sealed anymore. We have a filter here for dust but that's just out of convenience. We still get quite a lot of sandstorms in this area. But we don't filter the local bacteria anymore, training our immune system. I still filter most pollen. I have an allergic reaction against them which is quite common actually."

"Yes, I heard about that. Are you being treated for that?" Liara stopped typing, giving Tali her full attention. Suddenly, Tali realized that she had not felt so content and relaxed in a long time. She should put 'talking to a friend' on her to-do list regularly.

"Yes, we use a human procedure called desensitizing. By introducing the allergens slowly in a modified form, our immune system can get used to them and adapt. It has been quite successful for most quarians. It seems to take a bit longer for me." Tali put the facemask to the side. "My doctor tells me it's because of the stress."

"Doctors always say that," Liara said with a weary smile. "But you do look a bit stressed."

"I guess, heading a history department with no knowledge of history and archeology is a bit stressful. I'm a tech-geek! I'm useless in this!"

"You are not useless, Tali, you have accomplished a lot already," Liara said reassuringly. "I... would you like me to visit you? I don't want to add to your stress but maybe..." suddenly Liara looked like the inexperienced young asari from the old days again. Back when she wandered around the Normandy wide-eyed, intimidated by Shepard and everybody else on board. "... we know each other well... and I love talking about archeology... so I thought..."

"We are friends, Liara! I would love for you to come here and tell me about archeology," Tali replied with a smile realizing that she really looked forward to meeting Liara again. She had made new friends on Rannoch and every quarian knew her. Though none of that could compare to the Normandy-bond; the years of working and fighting, celebrating and grieving at each other's side.

 

* * *

 

"Welcome to Lekon Spaceport on Rannoch," the announcement over the comm woke Liara from a deep sleep. She must have been more tired than she had thought. Around her, the curtains were being drawn back by a perky, young asari flight attendant.

"We have arrived, Dr. T'Soni. Can I help you with your things?"

The young asari smiled at her with all the excitement of the young and inexperienced. Liara automatically analyzed her aura to see how she really felt. Like all asari, she could see a person’s emotions reflected in colors if she concentrated on it. This young woman looked genuinely happy, her aura shining brightly around her. Those auras had become rare in the last few years. The darkness of the Reaper War and it's losses weighed heavily on everyone’s soul. This young asari either repressed those dark times or decided to ignore them. Liara suddenly felt very old, more than her true years weighing on her in memories and experiences.

Sunlight filtered brightly, white and purple through the windows of the shuttle. Maybe catching a bit of sunlight would do her good, chasing the dark shadows from her mind.

"Thank you, I think I can manage."

She grabbed her small bag and shoved the datapad she had been trying to read into it. Stepping out of the shuttlecraft, she pulled the hood over her head and adjusted the dark screen in front of her eyes. Rannoch's sun was harsh, even to the tough skin of an asari and it was recommended to shield the eyes from it. The quarians still wore protective suits and masks against it, despite their immune systems having adapted quite successfully.

With her visor darkened, Liara stepped out of the shuttle. The hot, dry air of Rannoch sliced her like a knife to her lungs. The filtered and moistened air of her ship had spoiled her and the winds of Rannoch reminded her of that. She coughed lightly. The flight attendant handed her a moist cloth to hold in front of her face. It had two clasps to fix it to the hood and Liara saw many other visitors and quarians walking around with moist cloths hanging from their hoods. There must be a technological solution to this available, especially for quarians that still wore a variation of the enviro suits with the masks. But it seemed to have become a fashionable accessory as Liara noticed the different colors and fabrics worn all around her.

Rannoch was still rebuilding, not only from the Reaper war but also from the decades of geth occupation. The spaceport was plain with a few buildings scattered around it connected by silvery sunsails. Liara quickly stepped under one such sail, to get out of the direct sunlight. Her bags were delivered to her on a hovering transport box. She easily spotted Tali in the crowd. She still wore a purple suit with the familiar pattern of white swirls decorating the fabric. She also still wore the familiar face mask, not the moist cloth like almost everybody else. Her hood did not sit as tight as before, as the rest of her clothes looked more like a loose dress and less like an enviro suit.

"Liara!" Tali called out and waved at her.

Liara felt relief untensing her shoulders and she realized how much she had missed the simplicity of friendship. She wasn't lonely. She was hardly ever alone but being with your bondmate was something entirely different than being with a friend. She walked up to Tali, hugging her tighter than she usually did.

"Tali, it's so nice to see you."

She released her, Tali's aura shifting through different colors, showing her nervousness. They strolled over to the side of the path, staying under the sunsail. It was getting closer to evening and the sunlight was beginning to fade but it was still bright enough to keep the visors darkened. Tali let them over to a skycar, it's windows and roof darkened. Pleasantly cool air touched her face when Tali opened the door for her to throw her bags in and climb in.

Tali drove out of the city, pointing to buildings and institutions along the way. Lekon was growing fast, it was the largest city on Rannoch. It still looked a bit ramshackled with prefab buildings stacked on top of each other and the sunsails fluttering between them. There was construction everywhere, buildings rising up with a more quarian aesthetic and the main roads had solid sunroofs. In the long run, the whole city would one day be covered with these, Tali explained.

They left the city behind them, passing fewer and fewer buildings on the side of the road. Tali had gotten very quiet. She had taken off her mask and Liara could see the lines and greaves on her face and neck glimmering with her luminescence. It was incredibly beautiful. Liara had always thought that Tali was beautiful, even before she had ever seen her face. Her body language, defiant stance and beautiful voice combined with the colors of her aura, had always made her beautiful.

Around them the last buildings shrunk into the background, the desert stretching around them towards the horizon. In front of them, a mountain range rose up with a sudden rise, jagged cliffs with deep valleys in between. Tali steered the skycar to a lonely prefab container at the edge of a roped off dig site, right at the foot of a smaller mountain range.

Liara tried taking off the visor that was still shielding her eyes but obviously Tali's eyes were better adjusted to the bright light on Rannoch. The sunlight had become dimmer and Liara could at least set her visor to a lighter setting, finally seeing the desert sand in the light of the setting sun with it's pink shade.

She had read that a lot of people considered this part of the day the most beautiful on Rannoch. In fact, most quarians slept during the hours that the sun was at it's highest to avoid the harsh rays and used the evening through the night until sunrise for work and leisure. Quarian cities were lit with blue and purple lights all through the night. Energy was not a scarce resource from collecting the sun's energy through photovoltaics during the day.

Tali opened the door to the prefab building and Liara got a glimpse of a sparsely furnished room with a large desk, bed, couch and small table with two chairs. Every single piece of furniture was covered with datapads, boxes with rocks and sand and unusual pieces of thick, paper-like fabric. The room would have looked ugly and uncomfortable were it not for the pictures and curtains on the walls, showing beautiful quarian art. Tali took Liara’s bags and placed them just inside the door and ushered her out again towards the dig site.

"I want to show you something first while the sun is still up," Tali said.

The dig site looked shallow from the outside but as they got closer, Liara could see that it was actually a rather deep and narrow hole that turned into a tunnel at the bottom. She felt her perspective change as she looked around, her old training as an archeologist taking over. She noticed the different layers of soil that the dig went through. The topsoil had the familiar pinkish color that repeated a few times on the way down in different layers. Close to the bottom of the pit, blue and green layers appeared. Liara also saw layers that looked rougher, promising debris of some kind in them. She itched to go down there with tools and a brush; unearthing artifacts of forgotten civilisations again. It had been such a long time that she had felt dirt on her skin.

"You see it, right?" Tali asked quietly.

"You mean the traces of debris in those deep layers? Yes, I do. I'm also intrigued by the blueish color down there." Liara switched on the enhancement on her visor to get a better look.

Tali nodded. "I had the soil examined at our brandnew biochemistry department. The blue and green stems from vegetation that had been covered by a landslide over 900 years ago. They said that the vegetation is very different from the vegetation we know on the surface now. The cells looked to be extremely efficient in converting sunlight. They would have burned up here."

"So these plants may have lived underground?"

"Yes, that's the theory. But," Tali covertly lowered her voice, "we also found traces of people."

"Quarians?" Liara almost held her breath. There was so little known about the history of the quarians.

"Well..." Tali hesitated because she knew that the findings were not quite solid. She couldn't just jump to conclusions. "We don't have anything to compare our readings to. We’re just starting in finding traces of our past... but I think that those are from quarians." She stood straighter, conviction in her voice, "I believe, it's quarians that lived underground, more than a thousand years ago."

Liara felt a shiver run up her back. Very little was known about the ancient quarians. There was proof that they had once lived on the surface, moving on all fours. Those ancient quarians had been essential for Rannoch to develop an eco-system. The lack of flying insects made the spreading of seeds dependent on wildlife and quarian ancestors. However, there was a gap in the history, hundreds of years with no historic documentation, nothing on how the quarians lived in those days. The theory that their ancestors used to live underground had been rejected by many quarians, not wanting to be connected to cave dwelling lizards.

Liara slowly breathed out and placed a hand on Tali's shoulder.

"By the goddess, that would be an incredible find. A quarian civilization underground, that would cause a huge commotion, correct?"

Tali nodded. "Yes, that theory is hated among many. We don't like thinking about our history anyway, we look forward, not back. Living underground - like lizards - quarians don't like to think of themselves that way."

"Maybe it is time for the quarians to learn about their history," Liara said thoughtfully. "Who knows how many things are hidden in your history, how much wisdom you could gain? The quarians need to know themselves."

Tali let out a long sigh, her shoulders falling forward. "Well, I am the head of the new history department on our university, so who else but me? Not that I really know how to convince people to listen to me."

Liara let out a chuckle, "Tali, I have seen you stand up to admirals, I know you will be fine!"

Tali smiled at her, her luminescence shining beautifully in the lines on her face. "I hope you are right, Liara, I'm going to cling to that thought."

Liara looked back into the cave, the sunlight had sunk so low now, that the bottom of the pit was in darkness.

"So these structures you told me about..."

"We have not reached them yet. Dr. Deltreva and her team started this dig two weeks ago and they are constructing a tunnel to the cavity my scanners showed inside the mountain. We stopped to preserve the traces of plant life, the remains of pottery and some metal alloys. It will take weeks, months to analyze all of it but Dr. Deltreva wants to continue digging the tunnel tomorrow. She estimates two more days until they reach the structures."

"I'm looking forward to seeing them," Liara said. "So what do you have planned for tonight?"

Tali pulsed nervously. "I'm not a very good host, I'm sorry. I didn't even prepare... the couch converts to a bed and I have levo-food and drinks but if you would rather stay in a hotel in Lekon..."

Liara tilted her head to the side, using some quarian body language to calm Tali down.

"I would love to stay here with you, Tali, I don't need a lot of luxury except for my tea."

"Tea?" Tali stared at her in utter panic and Liara laughed out loud.

"I brought my tea with me, don't worry. It will be fine, let's go inside, make some food and talk about the old times and the new."

Tali's lines dimmed down in relief and she led her into the prefab building. She cleaned the table and made a half-hearted attempt at cleaning her desk until Liara stopped her. The rest of the evening was spent reminiscing about their time on the Normandy and about Liara's old archeological research.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just the intro, a bit of Tali and Liara. In later chapters, we will travel into the past and meet the ancient quarians.
> 
> I'm making this all up, headcanons, hurray! My idea is that the quarians used to live underground, in caves, about 1000 years before the events of the games. I imagine them as having bioluminescence and having lines on their bodies that light up and using those lights as part of their communication. That's why their eyes glow, you see?
> 
> I hope you will like my ideas.
> 
> Biggest thanks go to illusionsfire76 for editing this story.


	2. The Cave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back, dear readers!

 

* * *

 

"Professor Zorah, Dr. T'Soni? Would you care to join us in the tunnel? We're about to reach the cave," Dr. Deltreva's assistant called over the comm system.

Liara and Tali both pressed on their implant to answer.

"We'll be right there," Tali answered.

They both dropped their datapads on the table and picked up their hooded coats. The sun was still up, making the outside look blazingly white as they left the container. Tali squinted and fixed her mask to the hood, letting the faceplate darken to a comfortable level.

Recently, a young astrophysicist named Tan'Lordan, had published a theory that Rannoch's sun changed it's intensity over the years. He also established the hypothesis that the change in radiation outputs had radically changed the way the old quarians lived. To protect themselves from the harsher sunlight, they had to give up life in the open fields. Tali had contacted him right away; getting him to explain his theories to her and her class. Liara had sat in on the class which made Tali feel incredibly nervous at first.

She still felt out of place up there on the podium, being called "Professor" and having students listen to her. Her new class "Quarian Origins" had gotten her some critical looks in the university back when she had started it. The "cave theory" was not widely accepted but Tali managed to secure a well known asari historian and the young astrophysicist Tan'Lordan to hold classes. About twenty students had enrolled in the class. Almost all of them also signed up for the archaeological excursion and helped at the dig site.

Tali and Liara climbed down the stairs to the tunnel entrance, passing various students at work on the way down. They carefully extracted little things and pieces from the dark lines in the soil, checking it for traces of civilization. They all greeted Tali respectfully, it made her feel very strange. She still expected someone to call her out as a hack everyday.

Having Liara around for the last few weeks had helped her, she had been very supportive. She had a second prefab container installed next to Tali's and another module just for a power generator with photovoltaic collectors. The inside of the prefab hardly had enough room for a bed. It was full of terminals with screens from wall to wall. Liara worked in there many times but they also had spent many hours in Tali's room, studying scans and working through analyses from the students.

Tali and Liara became friends on the Normandy but weren’t very close. They spent time in the mess hall together or looked over scans together but they never spent much time with each other. Over the last few weeks, they had become very close and Tali grew to know Liara as a friend. She was a tremendous help, teaching Tali what she needed to know about archeology.

Dr. Deltreva greeted them when they finally reached the bottom. She wasn't particularly impolite but she was a scientist and didn't waste time with pleasantries. They both put on helmets provided by her assistant, exchanging them for the visors and masks and followed Deltreva through the narrow tunnel. The carved walls around them were made of compact sand first but slowly transformed into rock. The tunnel was supported by poles and mass effect emitters and was considered safe. Tali still felt nervous even though she had crawled through many narrow tunnels on ships but those were made of metal. She liked metal, it made her feel safe. Rocks were not her favorite thing.

They kept walking in the darkness that even the harsh sunlight could not reach, going deeper into the tunnel. The only lights came from the flashlights on their helmets and the blue glow of the mass effect fields. Tali felt her feet getting tired, she wondered how long this tunnel could possibly be. In front of them, lights became brighter and they came to the end. Four members of Dr. Deltreva's team had prepared the rockface with small explosive charges, waiting for the head of the team to give the command.

"Won't we destroy the thing we are trying to preserve and discover if we blow up this place?" Tali asked Dr. Deltreva, remembering Liara’s many teachings.

Dr. Deltreva looked at her as if she just now realized that Tali was even there. She was completely pre-occupied with the scanner and its readout. In answer, she projected a 3D-model of the cave, the tunnel and their positions to each other over her omni-tool.

"No, Professor Zorah, we are very careful not to destroy anything. As you can see here, the cave is surrounded by hard granite. We assume that is the reason why it is still intact. Most of the mountains of Gelldre Kah contain a mixture of granite and softer rocks. They have crumbled and cracked over thousands of years but this area is almost pure granite." She enhanced a section on the projection. "The granite acts like a protective bubble around this area but it also means that we cannot get in easily."

She stepped over to another asari who was working on the small charges sticking to the rockface.

"Tenja here, is in charge of the very controlled explosion that will give us a small hole to work through."

Tenja nodded and projected an image over her omni-tool,  "The explosion will make the rock in front of us brittle, just enough to pick at it and widen the hole carefully. We just want it to be big enough to send an omni-camera through."

Liara stepped up and studied the projection intensely.

"Can we not get better readings from the inside of the cavity?" she asked.

Dr. Deltreva shook her head, "Unfortunately not. The granite is much too dense to get more than rough outlines."

Tenja nodded her signal to Dr. Deltreva. She ushered them back into the tunnel and raised a barrier at the entrance. The other four scientists also wrapped themselves in a biotic bubble and after a nod from Dr. Deltreva, Tenja triggered the explosives. The small room filled with a cloud of dust and small pieces of rock peppered the barrier, causing white ripples to spread across it. An air cleaner started up and filtered the particles out when the asari dropped the barriers.

On first glance, the rockface did not look much different. Only when the archeologists took their small chisels and hammers to it, could Tali see the fractures crisscrossing on it. They had to wait patiently for a long time until they had worked a small depression into the wall. Tenja raised her hand abruptly and the other asari stopped working. She then placed her chisel in the center of the depression and hit it hard with her hammer. Nothing happened. She repositioned the chisel and hit it with her hammer again. The chisel sunk into the rock and seemed to disappear. With a surprisingly quiet rumble, the rock inside the depression crumbled and fell away. It made a hollow sound as it fell into the cave. Cold air, smelling of moss and metal, seeped into the room.

Dr. Deltreva was the first one to breathe again.

"Hand me the camera."

She took a small, floating device from her assistant and placed it front of the hole. The camera slowly floated into the darkness. With its tiny light, it looked like an insect in the darkness of the cave, at least for the tiny part they could see of it. The head archaeologist projected the camera’s transmission from her omni-tool. The other team members respectfully stepped aside to make room for Tali and Liara so that they could stand in front. Tali almost had to laugh at that. She felt like a kid playing with toys that were not hers.

Liara's hand on her back pulled her back to reality and she realized that she was communicating her nervousness with her lines to everyone in the room. With a deep breath she got her emotions under control again.

"I want everyone on this dig site to see the transmission from the camera," Tali said with a firm voice, "I want every student in this course to see this. This is our history, and it will not be kept secret."

Dr. Deltreva nodded and issued a few commands on her omni-tool. So far, they only saw the bright spot of the camera's flashlight crawling over mossy rocks. Occasionally, some areas lit up with blue glimmer. A stalactite hung from the ceiling, wrapped in a faint glow. One of the archeologists began to furiously type on her omni-tool and Dr. Deltreva adjusted the picture at the same time. More of the rocky walls and stalactites became visible now and they could see that they were covered with softly glowing vines.

"Those plants have bioluminescence, like quarians!" the archeologist pointed out and everyone looked at Tali. Her lines began to glow involuntarily. The asari continued, her fingers flying over the interface of her omni-tool. "That may have been an evolutionary advantage for quarians living underground. An ecosystem that does not rely on sunlight but on bioluminescence. That could have been the main resource of food and energy. This makes the cave-theory feasible!"

Tali had to hold on to Liara's arm for a second to steady herself. This was it! This was the proof she needed to find!

The camera floated down, turned and almost crashed into something. It slowed, dipping up and down. The cone of light illuminated a straight beam, presumably stretching from the bottom of the cave to the top. It was, without doubt, artificial. No natural design could ever be this straight. Every single person in the room outside of the cave gasped and Tali imagined the same thing happening all over the dig site as everyone watched the feed. The camera floated around the beam, an omni-sampler extended to scratch the surface. It removed some of the growth on the construction. In the light of the camera, they could see a metallic shine appear.

"Metal!" Dr. Deltreva gasped. "This is incredible!" The sampler scratched over the metallic surface and the doctor stared at her omni-tool reading the analysis. She gasped again, "An alloy! An iron-nickel alloy. By the goddess!" She looked around the group. "This alloy is technically perfect. The proportions of iron to nickel are such, that its rate of thermal expansion is very low. This requires a level of scientific knowledge and craftsmanship not far from our own today!"

The room fell quiet as everybody let that revelation sink in. They had expected to find traces of a rudimentary civilization, simple tools made of rocks and twigs, drawings on walls. Nobody had expected a technologically of an advanced society on an industrial level. Tali took a deep breath. This project had just grown. This was bigger than she had even imagined.

"I want Tan'Lordan here, I want the president of our university here -- Keelah! -- I want all members of the quarian council to be informed of this find. We will make everything public about this."

Liara looked at her, giving a tiny nod of encouragement.

"Yes, Professor Zorah," Dr. Deltreva mumbled, not taking her eyes away from the readout. "I will give you a report every day and send you all vid material."

"I want hourly reports for the next three days at least," Tali snapped back, earning her a surprised look from the asari doctor. "After that, we'll see. I want the current vid right now and the analysis of the metal composite."

This time, the doctor looked at her, "Yes, Professor Zorah, I'm transfering the files as we speak."

Liara stepped up, raising her voice slightly, "Will the structural integrity be preserved if the hole is opened up more?"

"We will try to make the access bigger but we can not promise anything," Dr. Deltreva answered, turning her attention back to her omni-tool again.

Tali turned away from the cave reluctantly, she would have loved to stay but she needed to talk to a lot of people. Liara followed her quietly through the tunnel, her presence a most welcome reassurance to Tali. She would have to speak to the head of the university, the politicians, and she would have to hold a press conference.

And what if nobody cared? Quarians did not look back -- history was gone and forgotten.

Tali knew that that was a mistake. Not many realized how much they had lost by forgetting the history of the Morning War. They had not seen the files from the geth consciousness. If the quarians had known how the Morning War had started, maybe peacetalks would have been possible, years before the Reaper invasion forced a decision upon them. They could have seen the homeworld decades earlier if they had analyzed their history. But most people did not see it this way. How would they look on these finds? Would they even care?

"Am I overreacting, Liara? Am I jumping to conclusions?" Tali wondered if Liara could even hear her questions, whispering to herself.

"I don't think you are, no," Liara said behind her. "Sometimes just a tiny scrap of a piece of junk can turn our perspective of the world around. The first find of the protheans was an insignificant little piece of metal that later turned out to be part of a prothean shoulder guard. It almost got thrown away. You have a giant pole inside of cave here, a thousand years old and it is made of metal like we would make today." A little snicker could be heard from Liara. "No, I don't think you are overreacting. You might even be underreacting."

"Thank you," Tali looked over her shoulder as she kept on walking to the exit. "I'm glad you are here."

"I'm glad that I'm here too, I had forgotten how much I love this."

They reached the stairs and ladders and climbed back up to the surface. Every person they met on the way congratulated Tali. It was quite embarrassing.

"Are you going to stay?" Tali asked as they stepped on the topsoil.

"Of course I'm staying. This may be the most significant archeological discovery of this era. I don't want to miss it," Liara came up to her side, smiling.

"But you... you are bonded, shouldn't you be with your bondmate?" Tali looked at Liara from the side. The sun was down and she could look at her without her mask on. She had wondered about Liara's extended stay for a while but had avoided the question. It was so nice to have her around, to have someone to talk to, she didn't want to risk it. But she felt guilty for keeping her away from her bondmate.

"The Reaper War is over," Liara said with a soft voice, "we have time now. We will be together for a long time. If we are always together, how can we ever miss each other? We talk every morning before I go to sleep and it is wonderful. It is good to be apart for a while, knowing that we will soon hold each other again. We have time now, thanks to Shepard."

"Yes..." Tali felt the words slipping away from her. She missed having someone. "Thank you for being here, Liara. As long as you feel happy being here... I would be glad if you stayed."

"I feel happy and I'm happy that I can help you, Tali." Liara put a hand on her shoulder, "I have a feeling... the hardest part is yet to come."

Tali raised her face to the starry sky and sighed, "Yes, I think so too."

 

* * *

 


	3. The Box

 

 

* * *

 

A soft buzz woke Liara up. She sat up and it took her a few minutes to realize that the buzzing came from the VI she had programmed to wake her. That VI had woken her at first by saying 'Good morning, Liara' but with it's feminine voice it had sounded like her mother. She had almost gotten whiplash from the way she sprang out of bed as a reaction to that. Instead of downloading a new voice, Liara had opted for the buzzing as a wake-up call. In truth, the voice sounded nothing like her mother and it was quite pleasant. But in her half asleep state, her mind had made different associations.

She made her tea and undarkened the windows, programming the window pane with a checkerboard pattern. The sun was still up but it was on it's downslope, the light already not quite as dangerously bright as it was during mid-day. Tali's windows were still dark and Liara hoped that she would get some sleep now. They had worked for hours on the report for the politicians and the press, making it sound exciting without blowing it out of proportion.

Liara had been quite astonished about the lack of enthusiasm displayed by non-scientists. She had been an archaeologist before she became the Shadow Broker and she had known her share of ridicule and ignorance. But she'd never seen such disinterest in history as quarian politicians displayed. Even a second video that showed the main pole as part of an elaborate network of poles and beams did nothing to convince them.

The common reaction went along the lines of 'So someone built something underground a long time ago, why should we care?' and Liara had to admit that she had been at loss for words at that. Before she actually said any of the rude remarks that came to her mind, she had stepped back and let Tali deal with the ignorant people. She provided moral support as much as she could and added her perspective only when asked.

Tali rose to the occasion, her typical bluntness being the best tool in this. Liara just watched that she did not pull out a shotgun. She also realized how smart it had been of Tali to make the vid of the find public immediately. Because one of the first questions posed to her was 'How do we keep this quiet?'. Tali's smug grin and purple glow was entirely excusable in Liara's opinion.

Tali managed to convince most of the council members of the importance of the discovery but the prime-senator was still not impressed by the importance of this find. The main complaint was that the underground structures may show that someone constructed something under ground but that this was no proof for a civilisation. It could have been a singular project while the society still lived above ground. Liara had to admit that this was possible.

After the first discussions about that point, Tali had contacted old friends in the admiralty. She managed to secure scans of the ground under the mountains of Gelldre Kah from orbit, searching specifically for the iron-nickel alloy in the same proportions that they had found in cave Zorah.

Having the cave named after her, had caused Tali to flicker and pulse in her luminescence in the most adorable way. Liara loved to be able to see these reaction on the quarians, especially because quarians were still not used to guarding their way of expressing themselves with lights. There was a refreshing honesty around them, unguarded emotions showing on their faces once you knew how to read them. Liara had asked her father about reading quarians and she had given her more information on that than she ever wanted to know.

The orbital scans showed an incredibly widespread network of metal traces under the mountain ranges, covering almost one third of the northern hemisphere. The scans indicated that the underground civilisation had been even bigger than they had initially thought. Dr. Deltreva suggested that the whole mountain range had once been hollowed out by caves and tunnels, most of them artificial and supported by the kind of giant beams as they had found in cave Zorah. Seismic tremors must have collapsed the system, forcing the early quarians out onto the surface.

The theory spread like wildfire among historians, causing a flurry of activity in asari historical archives, trying to find proof of the quarian heritage. When the asari had made first contact with the quarians, they had lived above ground and had a significant high level of technological expertise. But those early contactors had written extensive reports. All those reports were pulled out again and studied for mentions of a pre-surface culture of the quarians. Liara had set two agents on that task herself.

Liara took a piece of sweet floari bread from her stock box, nibbling on it while she skimmed through her news feed. She was converting her secret network to an official information broker company. Getting rid of the secrecy made it simpler to operate, she payed taxes on Illium and had employees that did not have to fear for their lives. She still had secret agents but she also had official representatives that worked quite independently.

After about an hour she was satisfied with the status of her business, her staff was competent and quite capable of running operations without her. She closed the interface and slipped into her coat and quickly walked over to Tali's container, keeping her head low and hidden in the hood to avoid getting sunburned.

The door to the prefab home slid to the side as soon as Liara stepped in range. Inside it should have been dark, the window panes at their darkest setting. Instead the room had little islands of light coming from datapads and terminals, strewn around the room. Liara reduced the darkness of the windowpanes and looked around in the now brighter room until she found Tali sitting on the floor, slumped against her cot. She slept, a datapad in her hand, her head rolled to the side, resting on the cot. A box of dirt and artifacts sat next to her on the floor.

Liara took a few steps towards that box, careful not to step on any datapads and terminal connectors lying around. She knelt down next to the box and used a small spatula to carefully lift a few pieces of debris in the box. Some of it looked like fabric and Liara cringed at the careless way in which it had been put into the box. It probably had been found by one of the students, Dr. Deltreva's team would never treat artifacts this way. The contents of the box should all have been in a climate controlled box.

Tali had apparently scanned the box with her omni-tool and had also made a protective mass effect field around the box. Liara congratulated herself on her teachings, at least Tali had had the good sense to protect the artifacts.

Wrapped in the now brittle fabric and peeking out at one side was a smaller box, made of metal and covered in foreign patterns. Some of it looked familiar, it reminded her of quarian fabric designs but there was also some kind of lettering and pictograms.

Liara felt a chill run up her spine. The pictograms indicated that the box stored information, in some kind of crystalline system inside of the box. Her hands began to shake as she thought about the possibilities. This could be a direct glimpse into the past, showing them what kind of civilisation had lived in the caves under the mountains. Even if it wasn't a historic book, if it was just the bookkeeping of some salesman, it would still be the best proof they could ask for to confirm the cave-theory.

No wonder Tali had not gone to bed, her omni-tool was still scanning for possible connections. Liara was a little miffed that she had not asked her to help, she couldn't wait to get her hands on this artefact.

Tali jerked awake and stared at Liara wide-eyed. "Liara! There you are. I wanted... I got.. look..." her hands moved vaguely over the box and Liara couldn't help but laugh.

"I saw. Why didn't you call me, Tali?" She tried to not sound so disappointed but knew that she failed.

"I'm sorry, Liara, I wanted to but I wanted to give you at least two hours of sleep and I set up the containment field like you had told me and started a scan and I must have fallen asleep..." Tali seemed to finally wake up and began checking her omni-tool.

"And I thought you had started without me," Liara said with relief.

"No! I would never! I was just going to call you and then..." Tali shook her head, her hair fluttering along with it. Liara still found it fascinating that quarians had hair almost as thin as humans. What a strange similarity across a galaxy.

"So did your scan yield any results?" she asked, scanning with her own omni-tool. The scan easily mapped the crystalline structure inside of the box and even showed the connector ports but the interface was too foreign to connect to. She tried different combinations of connecting to the crystals directly but the reading she received made no sense. Either the information was encrypted or just not compatible with her interface.

Tali looked onto her display. "Do you get a useful readout?"

Liara shook her head. She tried different programs but none of them worked. She climbed up onto the cot and made herself comfortable. This would probably take some time. She initiated another program, grumbling to herself. Tali climbed up to sit next to her, taking a sip out of a water bottle.

"One of the students, Bitaa, brought this in," Tali said, "I know, I should have called Dr. Deltreva, she would probably have a stroke if she knew that I have this artefact here. But at first it just looked like a pile of dirt and Bitaa only noticed it because of the readout of metal. I had her mark the place of discovery and I will have Dr. Deltreva investigate it as soon as she is up but I just couldn't resist." She smiled at Liara, her eyes blindingly white. "There could be so much information here and I thought, I could finally do something real, something helpful. This is tech, I should be able to get something out of it." She angrily punched the interface of her omni-tool. "But I just cannot get a good connection."

"Me neither," Liara said and tried another program. "I think we need more computing power to crack this. But first," she closed the interface and laid her hand on Tali's, "we should really get Dr. Deltreva to look at this."

Tali sighed, "I know, Kealah, she is going to kill me isn't she?"

"I have practised my barriers and you still have your shotgun?" Liara chuckled, "I'm sure we will be fine."

It was nice to hear Tali laugh, it had been a while. Liara stood up and pulled Tali up with her. "You should probably clean up and your clothes..." They both looked down on the purple suit Tali was wearing, a detective could probably tell her last meal and tea from it. Not to mention the grime of the desert sand that had baked itself into every wrinkle of the fabric.

Tali disappeared into the bathroom with a sigh and Liara managed to organize the room into something resembling a serious work area. As soon as Tali had come out again, they contacted Dr. Deltreva, telling her of the artifact in the box. A minute later, the door chimed and Dr. Deltreva and her assistant stormed in, still in their nightgowns. Liara pulled her face into a serious expression with all her might, it was not often that you saw an asari matriarch in her nightgown and wrinkles from her pillow on her face.

"This is an outrage! You should have contacted me immediately," the doctor began to glow blue in her anger, "you may have destroyed this artifact with your careless handling, I knew it was a mistake to let untrained students work on such a site, this could be our only chance to get a real glimpse... where is it? What have you done with it?"

Liara wordlessly pointed at the box on the table, the containment field still faintly glowing around it. She had placed a terminal next to it and put it's scanner on repeat, looking for any change in the crystalline structures inside. Dr. Deltreva was beside the box with two steps, her own omni-tool glowing. After a few scans, she visibly relaxed and turned to the terminal. comparing the readout to her own.

"This looks all very well, did you raise the containment field around it, Dr. T'Soni?" she asked, her eyes not leaving her omni-tool.

"No, that was Professor Zorah," Liara answered, keeping her tone as neutral as possible. Dr. Deltreva finally raised her head and looked at her in surprise before turning to Tali with an apologetic smile.

"Professor Zorah, I apologize for my outbreak, you obviously treated this artifact quite correctly." She turned back to the terminal, reading over the reports. "So you assume this is some kind of data memory?"

Tali cleared her throat before she stepped up to the terminal. "The crystals inside are aligned in a way that seem to make them ideal for data storage. We have used similar systems over the years."

Dr. Deltreva nodded. "Yes, my assistant swears by quarian memory crystals." She kept fiddling with the controls in her omni-tool until she turned it off with a frustrated sigh. "I guess this is more your expertise, Professor Zorah, I have no method to get a read on the crystals. I will be back later to make an assessment of the physical appearance of the artifact, maybe I can seperate the box from the fabric and the rest of the archaeological relevant pieces. But I will leave the technical connection and retrieval of the data to you, I hope by the goddess that you will find a way. What we could learn from this..."

The head archaeologist had a dreamy look on her face and it was clear that she loved her work, despite appearing brash sometimes. She stretched her back and seemed to notice for the first time that she was still in her nightgown. Her face turned slightly purple and she hurriedly bade them goodbye.

Liara turned to Tali, who was glowing in beautiful purple luminescence and her aura was shimmering around her. Liara was very proud of her: Tali had always been exceptional, from the determined pilgrim to the fighter to the admiral and now to first true historian of the quarians.

And all that with just an omni-tool, her stubbornness and occasionally a shotgun.

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Switching viewpoints still feels strange to me.


	4. The Diary

 

* * *

 

Tali was about to throw the damn box across the room. She had tried everything she could think of. She had even made a crystalline copy of the memory network and tried reading the crystals directly but nothing worked. A few hours ago, there had been a moment of triumph when she was finally able to get some data to stream but it was just random characters. The data was either encrypted or the memory process was too foreign to extract it correctly.

She ruffled her hair just like she had seen Shepard do all the time. She finally understood the appeal of it, it felt like giving your brain a good shake. It didn't help though. She was convinced that she had managed to make the right connection but whatever she extracted, made no sense. Tali came to the conclusion that the datastream was probably encrypted, making it nearly impossible to tell whether she had tapped into the right datastream or not. She could be looking at junk data or overlapping streams without even knowing it.

She took the box in her hands and examined it again. Dr. Deltreva had finally cleared the artifact after a day of scanning, testing and surface analysis. The box was constructed almost seamlessly, made from an aluminium alloy and polished. Now that it was cleaned, it looked as modern as any other metal object Tali had in her house. Were it not for the tests, she never would have thought that this box was over a thousand years old.

The real problem was that Tali did not know what kind of language quarians spoke back in those times. If there was a passcode, a certain word to unlock the datastream, she would probably fail at spelling it correctly. Keelah, she did not even know what kind of alphabet they used!

Tali turned the box around. Dr. Deltreva had said in her report, that this side contained faint markings that needed to be investigated at a later time. Maybe that time was now, Tali thought. She rummaged around in the little toolbox that Liara had put together for her and took out a brush and some light paint. Diluting the paint with water, she gently brushed it over the markings. They began to stand out a bit more as she scanned the surface and worked on the contrast of the picture until she could make out definitive lines in the metal.

At first, they looked just like scratches but after staring at them for awhile, Tali began to see clearly defined lines that turned up repeatedly in the collection of markings. She was convinced that these were letters, letters of an old alphabet. She let her omni-tool save each sign separately and searched through the archives of her university for a record of old documents. She need something to compare this to.

There were ridiculously few records of old quarian writings in the archives, proof of the general lack of interest the quarians had in their own history. The Morning War and it's scrambling flight from the planet had done the rest. There had been no artifacts on the flotilla and hardly any data from the time before the Morning War.

In an irony of epic proportions, they owed any and all artifacts and data in the archives today, to the geth. Left alone on the planet, the geth had, for unknown reasons, preserved whatever the 'creators' had left behind. After the quarians returned to Rannoch, they had found containers with household appliances, datapads, toys, all neatly stacked and sealed airtight. The data and storage area of a few museums, what little there were, had also been preserved and was the only link the quarians had to the distant past.

Tali called up all inventory reports, searching for things that contained letters and descriptions. She collected everything she found and had the powerful terminal, that Liara had lent her from her immense hardware, work through them. She went to her kitchen to get some tea, letting the terminal compare the markings on the box with any and all letters in the archives.

She took the cup with the tea to the window and looked outside while she sucked on the tube. Even though she did not wear the mask anymore, like most quarians, she still prefered to drink from a covered cup through a small tube. That way the drink stayed clean, protected from the dust and sand of Rannoch. Outside of the window, a few students returned from their midday break early, their heads covered and wearing sunmasks. They obviously could not wait to return to the digsite. It filled Tali with pride to see younger quarians excited about history, about the past.

The terminal chimed and the VI displayed a picture of the markings with a comparison chart next to it. A pleasant voice sounded from the terminal.
    
    
    "Translation matrix complete. Begin translation?"

Tali almost dropped her cup. Did it actually work? She stumbled over to the table.

"Yes, begin translation," she whispered anxiously.
    
    
    "Translating. Assuming horizontal notation."

On the screen the markings transformed to letters but still did not make sense. The VI spoke up again, "Dismissed. Assuming vertical notation." Again, the markings transformed to letters, this time vertically and slowly.

Tali could make out words.

Her hands began to shake as she sent a message to Liara. Some markings seemed to have no equivalent but Tali knew that they could work on their meaning once they had a basic understanding of the language. The door opened and Liara stormed in, her coat loosely hanging over her head, as if she had not even taken the time to put it on.

"Letters?" she asked breathlessly, "We have a translation matrix?"

"Yes, we have!" Tali replied as she felt her lines light up and her luminescence pulsed freely with happiness.

"By the goddess! That’s incredible. I thought it would take weeks, months!" Liara sat down next to Tali, staring at the interface.

"I compared the markings against the few records we have of old quarian writings. There were enough similarities but they wrote in vertical notation," Tali said. "Now, the programs on the terminal are working through the text on the box. Hopefully, those are instructions how to read the data."

The voice of the VI announced,
    
    
    "Translation complete at 96%,"

and displayed the text on the screen. Liara and Tali almost smashed their heads together, trying to read it at the same time.

"These are instructions," Tali whispered. Liara could only nod. "Instructions how to get a read-out and decrypt it. Keelah! We will get it, we will get the stream!"

Liara nodded again, already connecting her omni-tool to the terminal. After a few seconds, the VI acknowledged the connection.
    
    
    "Downloading data. 10%"

Tali stood up and began pacing the room.

"What will it be? Keelah, what will we find?"
    
    
    "30%"

"Can't this go any faster?" Tali cried out, pulling at her hair.

Liara shook her head. "This is as fast as the connection allows. We could decrypt it faster but we cannot download faster."
    
    
    "50%"

Tali began pacing again while Liara took out a ration bar and began to bite off little pieces.
    
    
    "70%"

The waiting was becoming unbearable.
    
    
    "90%"

Tali sat down, grabbing Liara's hand to calm herself down.
    
    
    "Download and decryption at 100%"

Tali stared at the terminal, suddenly unable to do anything.

Liara came to her senses.

"Display data," she ordered.

The translucent display transformed to a white background and displayed a page of the unfamiliar letters and the translation alongside it.

 

_ Inji'Zora Jerall, Researcher, Sunrise 22844  _

_This is my account of how the quarians conquered the surface, how we left the caves and learned to live on the surface of Rannoch in just a few years. I have documented the process of our move in as much detail as I can._

_I have been called the leader of the Surface movement. I have pushed this idea as loudly as I could. Still, I was part of a team and every single one of them had the same dream, the same powerful dream: to walk the surface one day under the stars. But this is my story, written down in my journal so please forgive me for focusing on my ideas and experiences. I am including some excerpts from my childhood diary to show you, dear reader, how long "The move to the Surface" has been a dream of mine._

_While this is a scientific report at its core, I hope to have written an entertaining story that will be a joy to read in the future._

_A future all quarians have now because we have left the caves and moved to the surface._

  


Tali squeezed Liara's hand so hard that she made a small whimper.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Tali apologized, letting go of Liara's hand. "But, this is it, right? This is the proof I was looking for, right?"

"Yes Tali, this is the best proof you could ask for. The story of the move from the caves to the surface, told by someone who not only witnessed it but was the initiator." Liara wiped a tear from her cheek. "You could not have asked the Goddess for a better find."

  
 

* * *

 

  
I included this excerpt from my childhood diary because this marks a significant day in our project for me. On this day, even though I was much too young to understand it, the seed for "The move to the surface" had been planted.

 

_()()()_

_Diary of Inji'Zora Jerall, age 9_

_Mother got so mad with me again today. She keeps yelling at me. She should know by now that it doesn't work. I had to help her with the moss as a punishment but I don't really mind that. I made light all the way down to my feet so she could see. She said I looked pretty._

_On the way back to the city-cave, I saw Heon and climbed over to talk to him. She got really mad about that. I don't know why, Heon and I have been friends since we were toddlers. Of course I want to talk to him._

_Well, I know it has something to do with us going to the suncave three days ago. We didn't even really go in that far and I only got a little burn and Heon too but his mother and my mother got into a huge fight and now they don't talk to each other._

_Heon and I want to go to a big suncave again tonight._

_()()()_

 

"I don't think we should go back there! I got in a lot of trouble last time."

Heon stopped climbing and held on to the rafter that supported the water aqueduct. His lights were flashing irregularly, casting blue shadows on the uneven surfaces around them. Inji'Zora climbed passed him, huffing at his remark. She had gotten in trouble as well but that was nothing new. She continued climbing up, not looking down into the darkness. She had no idea how deep this cave was exactly, she had never seen the bottom. From her position, she could still see the entrance, elaborate framework and scaffold bridging in the darkness.

They were not supposed to be here. This cave was not populated, it contained machinery and farms. The green and blue glow of the fungi that provided the light for the vines and foliage illuminated the walls of the caves. Further up, the sound of the pressure machines could be heard, thumping out their slow rhythm. If she squinted, she could make out the steamy fog billowing from them, turning into a mist and dripping down the walls. At the far end, a spring provided the water that travelled along the aqueduct into the city-cave Tullnok.

Inji climbed up on the next walkway. This part of the cave was built for easy access and they had to be careful not to get caught by one of the workers. But the walkway was quiet right now and they could pass it without getting noticed if Heon would just hurry up! She looked down to her friend, still holding on to the rafter, a bright blue spot in the darkness.

"Come on! We're almost there!"

Heon began to pulse again, she could even see his lines glowing under his clothes.

"Stop glowing so much! You can't hide like that."

She was very proud that she could control her own luminescence so well. She had even managed to lie when Teacher Pirrel asked if she had ever seen a surface animal. She had, but it was a secret. However, her mother always knew when she lied. Back when they had snuck away to look at a suncave for the first time, they had crawled into the little suncave behind the weaving-cave. An officer found them and she successfully convinced him that they had gotten lost. They both had gotten a little sunburnt but not enough to be noticeable. The officer and the nurses congratulated them on being so brave but her mother had pulled her lips tight and her eyes had a green tint to them. She knew what they had done, she always knew!

Heon's mother must have suspected something too because they started yelling at each other and Heon's mother called Inji a bad influence. That wasn't the first time that Inji had heard something like that. Heon had grinned at her and Inji was glad that her best friend wasn't mad at her. He was always complaining when they went on adventures but he always came along.

Right now he was complaining again and that was fine. Inji found his monologues kind of funny but he needed to come up fast or they wouldn't make it to the big suncave.

"Why do I keep doing this? I'm gonna get in so much trouble!" Heon muttered as he slowly moved over to the scaffolding and climbed upwards. "I already have to clean the whole house. After this I’ll have to clean the whole city, I bet."

"If you just shut up and keep your lights down, we won't get caught!" Inji hissed down to him, carefully looking to see if anyone came. Heon flickered angrily once more but then dimmed down. Only his hands were still bright, helping him to find places to hold onto in the scaffolding. When he was close enough, Inji held her hand down, her lines glowing in bright blue and pulled him up on the walkway.

A noise from the other end of the walkway made them both flinch, the machine workers came back. They snuck around one of the pipes that ran the hot steam from the ground up to the machines, careful not to touch it. Inji lowered her luminescence all the way down but Heon was flickering nervously. She made him hide behind her to cover him.

Lucky for them, the workers were preoccupied with a parchment in their hands, discussing something about tremors. They walked right past them without noticing the faint light reflecting on the wall from Heon's lines. Inji began to sweat from the heat radiating from the pipe as much as from the excitement of not being discovered. When the workers had reached the scaffolding at the far end of the walkway and began to climb upwards, she breathed out in relief, a big grin on her face. Heon punched her in the ribs from behind.

"Stop grinning like that. What do you think would have happened if they had seen us?"

Inji let her lights glow in slow, timid pulses. "What do you mean? We got lost, we were looking for the fungi-farms for a school project and we must have taken a wrong turn..."

"How can you do that? Lie like that?” Heon huffed out in frustration. “Even your lines look like you are really sorry."

She grinned and walked back to the scaffolding that was supposed to connect to another cavern close to the surface. At least that’s what it was supposed to be according to the map her grandfather had made.

"Practice, lot's of practice, Heon."

She took a rope and an arrow-hook from her hip; arming her crossbow. Then aimed the small crossbow towards the top ridge that held the whole scaffolding in place. They were so far up now, that even she was not willing to risk a slipped hand on the way up. At this height, they would surely die if they fell.

"How do you know how to use that?" Heon asked, carefully stepping out on the walkway.

"My father taught me. He said that a quarian should know how to shoot ropes and took me shooting last week."

She lowered the crossbow, looking for a better point for the hook.

"And he allowed you to take his crossbow?" Heon looked at the tool suspiciously.

Inji's lights flickered once before she had them under control again, "Well... this is an old one, not his main crossbow, I'm sure he won't mind..."

"You just took it?" Heon took the crossbow from her hand to inspect it. "A Liberator-4, I’ve read about this type. They are precise but don't cover much distance. If I could put in a stronger spring in here..." He turned it around and began looking for the access slots on the bottom before Inji snatched it back from him.

"Now is really not the time, Heon. You can fix it later," she glared at him and aimed again.

With a loud 'snap' that echoed through the cave, the arrow flew away and curved over the top ridge. Inji slowly pulled the rope back until the hook caught on it. Heon looked impressed.

"Your father taught you that?"

"Yes."

She caught a glimpse of sadness on his face. Heon's father had left the family and moved to the lower city-cave Mekken. He and his sister still had contact with him but he never really did anything for Heon. They usually did things for his younger sister instead. He never complained but Inji knew that it bothered him.

"Hey, I can ask my father if you can come along the next time we practise rope-shooting."

Heon nodded, his short dark braids bouncing. "That would be nice," he smiled at her, "thanks."

Inji climbed up on the side of the walkway and tied the end of the rope tight to the scaffolding, high enough so that it wouldn’t be noticed by someone walking on the walkway.

"That will be fun. Last time my father took me to the common arena to practice and afterwards, we went to the big arena to watch a game."

"You realize none of that will ever happen if we get caught here, right?"

"We won't get caught."

"If you say so..." Heon shook his head and climbed up beside her.

He pulled out some rope from the retractor on his belt and hooked it onto the rope that Inji had just tied. Inji did the same and they climbed towards the stalactites on the ceiling side by side. The scaffolding had larger gaps now as it curved towards the stalactites making the climb more difficult.

Inji recalled the map she had looked at that had been hidden in a storage box with various other things from her grandfather. Her father had put the box under his desk and used it to rest his feet on. She never asked if she was allowed to look in the box because if she didn't ask, then no one could tell her not to look.

Her grandfather had been an explorer, a cave surveyor. He had measured caves and made the maps that were later used to expand and develop new production areas and cities. The whole city-cave Tullnok only existed because of his maps and the calculations the engineers based on them. When he came over to eat with them, he had always told long, exciting stories about his days as an explorer. Inji decided back then that she, too, would be an explorer one day when she was an adult.

The map that showed the cave they were in right now, had been a bit rougher on one side. It looked more like a sketch and less like a measured map. While the main part of the map was exact and the lines had been retraced, the top left side was still sketchy. To Inji, it looked like her grandfather had either thought that part of the cave was not important or that he wanted keep it hidden.

She had memorized the topography as best as she could but the drawings had not been precise. The proportions did not quite work but there was a ledge above them that she recognized. That's where she wanted to go. She took hold of a vine and pulled herself over the edge. Turning around, she made Heon grab the vine too and helped him up. They sat down, catching their breaths and looked around.

"Sooo, Inji, why are we here?" Heon asked. He lay down on his back and stretched his arms behind his neck. His luminescence had calmed down, glimmering in peaceful white. Inji was not calm, she crawled around the edge of the ledge, looking for marks, anything unusual.

"My grandfather had marked this ledge but it was never used for any construction. I wonder why," she mumbled and crawled over to the wall where the ledge rose and merged with the wall. "He put a sign here, a curly line. I don't know what it means but it has to mean something."

The wall sloped backwards and was easy to climb. She moved up and followed a rift to the side. Another small ledge became visible and she pulled herself up on it. The wall behind this ledge was uneven, it looked like loose rubble. She began to move rocks to the side, careful to stack them and not let them drop. Quarian don't let rocks drop, her father always said. The rubble felt different in her hands, it was warm and dry. Her curiosity became a tangible force, making her move the rocks and rubble to that side faster and faster. Suddenly a crack appeared and the wall crumbled down in front of her.

Light, brighter than she had ever seen hit her face and she almost fell as she threw herself to the side. Her cheek felt warm and her skin seemed to contract. She wanted to check it out but a bloodcurdling scream made her scramble down towards the big ledge in a panic.

Heon held his arm and tried to crawl away from the beam of light that came through the hole. It had apparently hit him on the arm and the skin was already turning a dark purple. He stopped screaming, realizing that others would come if they heard. He had only screamed like that because the pain surprised him. Inji looked nervously down to the walkway. If someone had heard his scream, they would soon be discovered.

But nobody came, the workers probably couldn't hear anything over the thumping of the machines. Inji crawled to Heon, carefully edging around the bright beam of light. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" she cried, tears were streaming down her face. She never meant for her best friend to get hurt.

"Don't worry, it was an accident,” he said as he squeezed her with one arm. “Can we go home now?" He leaned back to look at her and his eyes turned very bright when he saw her face. "It hit you in the face! It looks really bad."

Inji carefully felt around the area with her fingertips. There were already welts forming.

"Sekka, I can't hide this!"

"My mother will see this too," Heon said, peeking under his hand to see the burn, turning away from the bright beam.

The light pouring in was so bright that it hurt their eyes. They were both squinting and Inji had colorful spots dancing in her vision, preventing her to see clearly. Heon turned to the side to avoid having the beam in his vision.

"You can't leave that hole open," he said, "people will notice it."

"Yes, I know," Inji said as she shielded her eyes with one hand.

She nearly slipped off the small ledge because she couldn’t use both hands. That would have been less than great, to fall and probably break all her ribs. She managed to grab a dry vine and pulled herself up again. One by one, she moved the rocks back over the hole, silently thanking her father for teaching her to never drop rocks. The beam became narrower and dimmer until she finally shut it out with the last piece of rubble.

The darkness was soothing. Inji slowly let out a sigh and waited for the colorful spots in her vision to disappear. They made their way down in silence. Inji left the rope in its place since it was hardly visible and she wanted to come back here anyway.

Heon sighed, "You are going back here, right?"

"Yes,” Inji nodded. “That was sunlight from the surface! Maybe I could even see the surface if I crawled into the hole!"

"You will burn your skin down to the bones!"

"I'll wear protection! I'm sure we can come up with something." Inji said.

"We?" Heon snorted. "What makes you think I ever want to do that again?"

"Oh, come on!" she laughed. "I saw your lines light up. Think about all this energy! What you could do with that!"

Heon opened his mouth but snapped it shut to let out a grunt instead.

"Sekka. You know me well."

"Sure do," she grinned.

They managed to leave the cave just before the workers returned. Now they just had to come up with an excuse for the sunburns they had gotten.

  


* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we have our new heroes! I hope you like them, we will see a lot more of them. They will grow up to be pretty important in this story.
> 
> The next chapters will always start with one of the diary entries, and then tell the story behind it. We won't be seeing Tali and Liara for a while but quarians, many, many quarians.
> 
>  
> 
> Biggest thanks go to illusionsfire76 for editing this story.


	5. Squick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go, our protagonists have grown up a bit. They are still fairly young, maybe like 17 to 19 compared to humans but we can't say for sure. For one, the underground quarians would not count in years as they don't see the sun and don't know of the rotation around it to relate to. I think they would count 'years' by the changes in the flora in the cave, some kind of harvesting cycle maybe. They also might mature earlier than humans, which reflects later on in quarians going on their pilgrimage when they're still quite young.

 

* * *

 

_Diary of Inji'Zora Jerall - age 16 Changes_

_I bought a new robe today, Gilaan helped me pick it out. I hope that covers it for a while, I hate climbing around in the shopping district. We went to the library later on and I found some interesting documents. There may be some truth in grandfather's old stories!_

_My little animal friend looks sick, I think he doesn't like living here in the caves. We are going to have to do something about that._

__  
  


*********

 

"Inji, are you coming?"

The high pitched voice of Gilaan pierced in her ear. Inji subdued the annoyed pulsing that her lights wanted to do. Gilaan had been teamed up with her for a school project once and ever since then, she would not leave her alone. Inji wasn't used to people liking her company, most found her weird and annoying. But she kind of liked having Gilaan around because she wasn’t stupid.

Gilaan was fairly intelligent, no, very intelligent and she also was beautiful. Her skin was of a light purple, her greaves and lines perfectly symmetrical, shining in a soft blue light. Her braids had the color of dark iron ore with little flowers and gemstones in them. Many wanted to be her friend and Inji really didn't understand why she even wanted to hang out with her.

"Yes, I'm coming," Inji grumbled and followed her friend.

She should be grateful. Gilaan was helping her find a new robe. Inji never paid much attention to fashion though. All she really was, was an expert on were shoes; good, soft shoes you could climb in. It wasn’t that she hated pretty clothes, she just never felt like thinking about it much. Gilaan on the other hand, wore wonderful pants and robes, flowing around her like flower petals.She climbed up the few steps to a store that was decorated from top to bottom with colorful fabric. Outside and inside of the store, colorful fungi made light patterns on the walls and a few gas lanterns gave off yellow light. It was almost too bright. Gilaan grabbed two robes and held them up in front of Inji’s torso.

"I'm not sure which is more your color..." she said to no one in particular. She shoved Inji in front of a mirror and held a purple robe with white patterns and a green robe with blue patterns under her face. "Hmm, both look good on you. What do you think?"

Inji stared at her reflection, looking at her black braids tied over to hang on her left side. Her hand went up to her left cheek, where the sun-scar had cut through her lines. Her skin was lighter there and it had become thinner, showing red veins in crisscross patterns. The scar had no light. When it was dark, it looked like a spot of emptiness in her face.She covered the scar with her two fingers, turning her eyes away from it to concentrate on the fabric. Gilaan had a worried look on her face for a second before it was replaced with the normal happy smile that she always had. Inji sometimes wondered if her happy smile was as much a cover as her own permanent frown was.

"I think the purple is your color," Gilaan said in that annoying and endearing cheerful way of hers.

She turned Inji away from the mirror and made her put on the robe. It draped down towards her knees and had a belt to tighten around her hips. Gilaan set the belt at an angle and ruffled the fabric to the side. It now looked almost exactly like the dress she was wearing herself. Inji was okay with that, she just wanted to wear something nice that didn’t make her look odd.

"That looks really good on you!" Gilaan said, taking a step back.

Inji had to agree, she really liked how the robe looked on her. It had a hood and if she pulled it over her braids and the left side of her face, her scar was almost hidden.

"I like it, I take two," she said to the store owner.

Gilaan looked like she was about to faint. "You can't buy two of the same dress! That's ridiculous!"

"Why not? I like this one and I hardly ever go shopping. I’d rather have two of a robe I like than one."

Gilaan flickered her lights annoyed and grabbed another robe from the rack.

"At least take this one, it's the same cut and the purple is just a bit darker."

"Fine." Inji waved at the store owner, ignoring his amused glow and handed him the robe she had just tried on. "I take this one and the darker one my friend is holding."

Gilaan looked very proud of herself.

The store owner told her the price and Inji counted out the coins from her money loop. It was a bit more expensive than she had planned but her parents had given her money to buy herself a dress and shoes. She could save some money on the shoes. She let the coins slide from the loop and tucked it back into her pouch.

They left the store and Inji automatically turned towards the Knowledge Cave. They left the busy shopping area and Inji slowly relaxed. Crowds made her nervous. They had to climb up a few ladders to get to the access tunnel to the Knowledge Cave. The gardeners and path curators had rearranged and watered the moss on the sides of the walkways. It glowed bright green, showing them the way. Unlike the caves, the carved tunnels had hardly any glowing fungi, without the moss, the walkway would have been completely dark.

The Knowledge Cave actually was named Hardet's Cave, after the founder of the first university. The buildings of the school and the university had more or less grown into each other. The classrooms and practise rooms were covering the cave walls and hung from the scaffolding, connected by pipes and walkways. Whisps of steam from the pipe network were floating around and collected under the cave ceiling. The cavern looked like a confusing labyrinth, filled with walkways, ladders, scaffolding and cabins. Because many children were always running around, accidents were prone to happen. For safety, an elaborate network of nets was set up at certain levels, more than the other city-caves had.

All the structures, scaffolding and nets made it impossible to see how big and deep the cave actually was. Inji knew that it was one of the largest caves but it was smaller than Mekken. The city-cave, Mekken, had been an enormous project; connecting five individual caves into one big one. The scaffolding inside of Mekken had run the Zerten mine dry and the construction had to be suspended for a year until the mine Alderken produced enough iron for the scaffolding.

They stepped to the side and leaned against the guardrail to let a group of children pass as their little feet made the whole walkway tremble with their running. Inji snatched a glimpse of Gilaan' face as the children ran by, she looked like she wanted to hug them all. Inji was always nervous around children and she had no siblings, so she wasn’t really used to young children. Gilaan's family was one of the few who had more than three children. She had four younger siblings and she loved children. When the children had disappeared to a lower level, the two of them continued their way along the main walkway.

Inji turned to Gilaan, "I want to go into the library and afterwards I want to meet Heon at the lab. He has a new project he wanted to show me."

As she expected, Gilaan's eyes lit up on the mention of Heon's name.

"Oh, can I come along?" she asked, her not so secret crush on Heon making her lines glow.

Inji sometimes wondered if she was just friends with her so that she could get closer to Heon. Strangely enough, she seemed to lose all of her bubbly personality around Heon, turning into a shy and awkward girl.

"Yes, but the library first. I want to ask Librarian Cirn'Ektal about some old documents," Inji said. "There must be something in those about the surface."

Gilaan flickered her annoyance. "Why are you still obsessed about that stuff? Quarians can't live on the surface, we would burn in the sunlight. We have to live in the shade, under the mountains is our home, like it says in the nursery rhyme." She flickered again, "Teacher Feeren is already angry with you because you keep asking about the surface."

"But they taught us that we live on a planet. That Melko'Tokarn watched the stars a long time ago and determined that. How many stars have you seen?" Inji had grabbed Gilaan's arm and pointed upwards to the ceiling of the cave. "No view of the stars anywhere. He must have done it on the surface, and he probably was not the only one. My father said that his father has seen the stars," she whispered the last bit since she had never told anybody that little secret.

"Your grandfather has been on the surface?" Gilaan's eyes shone like bright lanterns. Her voice dropped to a whisper, "That's impossible. You know what they say, we cannot live up there and the creatures of the surface cannot live down here."

"Maybe that isn't true?" Inji had to smile at the astonishment in her friend's face. She actually had the common sense to control her lights so that the people walking past them on the walkway would not wonder about their conversation.

"Sekka, you keep saying things like that, you gonna get us in so much trouble!"

Gilaan turned and swiftly walked forward towards the ladder that would take them to the library level. Up on that level, fewer people walked past them. She turned back to Inji, glaring at her.

"Don't you have enough? Your parents got you into the Explorers even though you were way too young for it. You have seen unexplored caves and undiscovered plants, yet you are still not satisfied. When will you stop?"

Inji let her lights radiate indignantly, "Never. There is so much more than just these caves and I want to see it all."

"You can discover new caves and survey them. New homes for the quarians. Isn't that a wonderful thing? And you won't get hurt." Gilaan looked almost pleading and Inji realized with a start what a good friend she had become.

Inji took Gilaan’s arm and led her over to a small alcove with a natural ledge. They climbed up and sat on it, overlooking the intricate scaffolding network of the Knowledge Cave.

"I want to tell you something," Inji said. "Last week, I went investigating the northern outskirts of cavern B239 with the Explorers. It is far behind Mekken, through Iktimi and the access cave to the Alderken mine."

Gilaan flashed her lines once, surprised, "I've never been that far, I don't even know how long that takes."

"It took us almost three days from the Mekken exit. That's why I missed school," she noticed that she wrung her hands and sat on them to stop. "You know how they said that the mountains of Gelldre Kah Rannoch cover the whole planet, how there will always be enough room for the quarians?"

"Yes?"

"The mountains end." Inji lowered her voice to a whisper, "Cavern B239 is the last one. We let one of the robots go through a tunnel as far as the steam pipe would go and there was a hole in the wall. Zairis managed to get the picturegraph through the hole and we could see outside. There were no more mountains."

"No mountains?" Gilaan's eyes were wide and bright in shock.

"No, no mountains, everything was flat. Flat and sandy." Inji shuddered. "You can't build caves in sand, you know. Sand isn't stable."

Gilaan shook her head. "I'm sure the mountains stretch further on the other sides, there is still rock to build in."

"Zairis told me that the same happened on the last three explorations he's been on and that Master Effeld has ordered them all to keep it a secret," Inji said. "And last night, I overheard my parents talking. My mother works at the council, she knows all about the numbers and she asked my father what size of population would be necessary for us to survive. Father said that our numbers are dangerously low. He had plants die in his laboratory from a disease that had a larger population than the 2 million we are now."

Inji watched her friend. The shock had worn off and fallen from her face. She could see that Gilaan had begun to think.

"I thought we are over 3 million," she said after a while, "that was one of the reasons for the Mekken project, to make room."

"But remember how they ordered a reduced birthrate after Mekken had been finished?"

Gilaan nodded, "Of course I remember, mother had just gotten pregnant with Xelle. People from the population ministry asked her if she really wanted to continue her pregnancy. Xelle almost would not have been born." She suddenly looked up with a realization, "Xelle is the only small child in our neighbourhood. There are very few babies born."

Inji nodded, "Yes, father said that they pay young parents if they have only two children. He thinks that we are shrinking too fast. But we don't have room to grow. Maybe one day..."

"What? What one day?"

Inji looked at her friend. So far she had only ever talked to Heon about these things. For Heon, this idea was just a new technological challenge. He loved thinking about the things he could do with the sun's energy. It felt good to talk to someone else about it.

"Maybe one day we will have to move to the surface. Maybe that's where our future is."

"And you want to be the one leading us there?" Gilaan asked with dripping sarcasm.

"I never said that! But someone will do it, I bet." Inji looked up to the ceiling hidden in the darkness. "Just think about, we could see the stars one day."

Gilaan suddenly took her hand and squeezed it. "That would be cool. To see the stars and the sunrise..."

Inji stared down on their interlocked hands, the warmth in her fingers making her glow. It felt nice.

"I... I want to show you something else, later," she mumbled, still holding on to Gilaan's hand, "but first the library, before the librarian leaves and then we have to visit Heon."

Gilaan turned purple again on the mention of Heon's name. "Yes, visit Heon."

Inji looked at her beautiful lines sparkling and sighed, "You really like him, don't you? Why don't you spend some time with him?"

Gilaan's face turned a deep purple and she squeezed Inji’s hand like she was afraid to fall.

"Uhm, yea, I really like him, I think he is so... interesting, so smart and pretty and the way his braids stick out..."

Inji knew that his braids stuck out in all directions on his head because his mother still did them like he was little boy but she decided to not comment on that. It had never occurred to her that someone could think of Heon as attractive, even hot. To her, he was just.. Heon! The spindly little boy who was always afraid but still followed her on every adventure. Even after he had burned his arm in the sunlight because of her, he was still her friend. He wasn't allowed to go on cave adventures anymore though. But Inji's parents knew that she would keep going into the caves and decided to enroll her with the real cave explorers. That way, she was at least under supervision and had the right equipment with her. Heon always surveyed the samples and maps she made from her explorations with her. She knew that Heon liked Gilaan, of course he did, everybody liked Gilaan. It probably never occurred to him that she could like him too. It would be nice to see them both happy.

"So why don't you ask him, you could watch a play or something?"

Gilaan looked at her in surprise and sputtered, "He never showed any interest. He just treats me like I'm not really there."

"I'm pretty sure that you even _possibly_ being interested in him, is just outside of all probability for him. You might have to make things very clear to him," Inji said and jumped off the ledge, pulling Gilaan along with her. She stumbled and more or less fell into Inji’s arms; ending up in an awkward hug. Inji froze but kept holding her. Gilaan stayed very still, her lights glowing warm.

"I really like you too, you know," Gilaan whispered, as she looked up at her friend, "I don't want to come between you and Heon though."

"Heon is just... my friend, you wouldn't come between us," Inji said. "And if you two would get together, I think that would be great."

It felt nice holding Gilaan, it was unusual but she liked it. Gilaan laid her hands on Inji’s braids and pulled her face down to place a kiss on Inji’s left cheek, right next to the scar.

"I could really fall for both of you. You’re very attractive too," Gilaan admitted.

Inji froze again. "Me? I'm...?"

Gilaan snickered, "Yes, you are very attractive. I'm sure Heon sees it too. I always wondered if there was more between the two of you."

"Me and Heon? No, we just do things together. Research and stuff..." she trailed off, thinking about the rest of the things they did. Reading together, leaning against each other; sometimes they slept in the same bed, holding each other but that was all. There was never more between them. She had never wanted more and Heon had never tried anything more.

All these things made Inji a little nervous. While all around her, the girls in class had crushes and boyfriends or girlfriends, she was never interested in that. She could see that someone like Gilaan looked pretty and even Heon was good looking. But she never had  feelings like they were described in the romance novels, the attraction and desire. All she wanted were friends to hang out with, explore the caves and one day, she wanted to see the surface.

"Let's go to the library now," she said as she turned around and pulled Gilaan behind her, keeping her hand firmly in her friend’s. Gilaan didn't seem to mind it.

The library consisted of fourteen large, connected cabins and a few siderooms. They had to climb up three more levels to get to the entrance. Up here it was a bit more quiet, and inside of the cabins, gaslights made the rooms very bright. The librarians were obsessed with lights because it was important for reading they said. Inji knew a few corners that were not quite so bright and preferred reading there.

They walked around the shelves until Inji found her friend, Librarian Cirn'Ektal. He was young, just out of school and had started his university classes. He worked at the library after class. He was the only one Inji knew in the library who was interested in old documents like her. The last time she had seen him, he had promised to get boxes from a storage room that were supposed to contain documents from Melko'Tokarn.

"Hi, Cirn!" she said to the young man.

Gilaan also greeted him, flashing him her brilliant smile. Cirn nodded at her but he turned back to Inji and gestured at her to follow him. He let them into the farthest building. It was smaller than the others, just about the size of half of a classroom. He showed them two boxes on a table in the back, tied shut with a rope. They looked moldy. Inji could not understand how they could let such historical artifacts sit in storage like that.

"We have two more of these boxes," Cirn said, "I convinced the head librarian that you can look through all of them under one condition. You have to write down records of all the things in there, clean them, take pictures and put them in new storage boxes. I have some here, made of iron-nilok, to use for that. We don't want stuff to get moldy again." He searched through a small toolbox on the table. "You have to wear gloves, there are some in here," he pointed to Gilaan, "for your friend too."

"Me?" Gilaan sighed, "I knew you would drag me into this."

She pulled on the gloves and pulled another stool next to Inji. Inji untied the rope, parts of it literally fell apart in her hands. Holding her breath, Inji opened the lid. The lines on her hands and arms illuminated the inside and she could see particles of dust rise up. Her nose began to itch right away. Cirn slammed the lid shut and grabbed a portable aspirator from a cupboard. He waved it over the box and the table, sucking up the particles.

"Sekka, I should have thought about that. Those could be spores. You could get really sick from them and there's dust, who knows what's in there." He rummaged through the toolbox again and retrieved two breathing masks with built in rear filters. "Here, you'll have to wear those and I'm getting an extractor. Don't open the box again before I have set it up."

Gilaan looked at Inji with wide eyes. "We could've breathed that in! People get sick from that! My uncle Lebat almost died because he breathed in mold."

Inji felt sick of worry. She had endangered one of the two friends she actually had, carelessly, as always. Why did she do that all the time? Heon's whole arm had a streak of darkness because she just had to open that suncave. He would wear that scar for the rest of his life and now Gilaan could get sick just because she was so curious about stupid old documents.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, "I'm so sorry. You don't have to stay, you don't have to do this, this is not..."

"You want me to leave?" Gilaan asked, her voice muffled under the mask.

"Yes. No. I... maybe you should."

"Quiet, you, I'm not leaving." Gilaan raised her head defiantly, her lights daring Inji to argue.

Inji pressed the mask to her face, effectively hiding her face behind her hand. "I just don't want..."

"Quiet, you!" Gilaan glared angrily at her as she pulled the straps of her own mask tight. "Don't think I would hang around if I wasn't interested."

Cirn returned with an extractor and positioned it over the boxes. He had fixed a mask to his face too and took care to slide the door closed behind him. The extractor turned on with a hiss as soon as it was connected to the steam system. Inji watched the particles disappear inside. She would need to take a sample of them so that Heon and her could later analyze what kind of particles they were. She had never seen so much dust.

Cirn turned to walk away, reminding them once again to document all the particles and to take pictures with the picturegraph in the toolbox. When he had left, Inji jumped up and swiped a sample-tester over the filter. She slid it in one of the little fabric bags she always had with her and turned the extractor back on.

"Do you think you'll find something in the dust?" Gilaan asked.

Inji nodded eagerly. "Down here, so much dust? It's way too moist around here. There shouldn't be dust."

"You think it came from the surface?"

"Yes, I do," Inji whispered. Even though the door was closed, she did not want anybody to hear her crazy ideas. She got ridiculed enough about that.

Gilaan's hand flew to her mouth and slapped against the mask.

"That’s dangerous! Surface particles are full of pathogens, poisonous for us!"

Inji grabbed her hand and pulled it from the mask. Gilaan's lights were pulsing in fear. Inji made her own lights emit a darker and clearer pulse, trying to calm her. "I don't really have proof yet but I'm convinced that quarians have been on the surface before. Think about Melko'Tokarn, he saw the stars and my grandfather the explorer, he told me about the stars. They were outside, on the surface and they didn't die from it!" She pulled Gilaan to her and hugged her. "We have the breathing masks on. We are being careful. We're going to be fine."

She tried to convince Gilaan as much as herself with her speech. No matter what they did now, if the particles were really dangerous, it was already too late. Might as well just continue with the project.

Inji opened the same box again and waited for the extractor to suck the dust away. Inside, there were rolls of parchment made from the leaves of the Dalsana plant. The Dalsana plant was one of the few plants in the caves that had light colored leaves, ranging from grey to yellow depending on the fungi that lived with them symbiotically. Quarians had managed to make parchment from the leaves a hundred years ago but modern parchment was infused with flexible Kathurka fibers to make it stronger and more durable.

The rolls of parchment in the box were clearly not quite as durable and some were already turning brittle or had began to mold. Inji took the rolls out of the box as carefully as possible. At the bottom of the box, different sized slates with writings and drawings were arranged. They were protected by pieces of soft fabric stuffed between them and were in excellent condition, even the white chalk-ink were mostly intact on all of the slates.

Inji arranged the slates on a second table and Gilaan took pictures of them as Inji held a lantern over each one. After they had documented all the slates, they turned to the parchments. Those were much more difficult to document. They had to be extra careful when they flattened them since some of them ripped and fell apart when they only tried to touch them. After documenting everything, they could finally begin reading and copying the text and drawings to new parchments. Inji half expected Gilaan to get bored with it, but she turned out to be really talented in copying the drawings.

Two hours later, they both leaned back with an exhausted yet contented sigh. They hadn’t even copied half of the stuff in the boxes but the masks were cutting into their skin and the filters were full. Inji called Cirn and arranged with him that they would leave everything as it was and he would lock the room. They wanted to come back the next day.

Inri put all their notes and drawings in a folder and clutched it to her chest. They hurried outside and breathed in the familiar air of the cave with a sigh of relief.

They had to climb a few levels down to get to Heon's laboratory. He worked as an assistant for Professor Ther'Emell from the university who had taken him in when the head of the school recommended him. He spent most of his free time there, largely unsupervised. The professor had given him free reign over some older equipment.

Heon's favorite topic was finding ways to use light to produce energy. Professor Emell had developed a cell that used the fungi bioluminescence, the normal light source for the farms, to produce energy. He even managed to store that energy in chemical cells and could use it to produce sparks, even ignite a fire. Heon was experimenting with ways to make the process more efficient.

When they entered the laboratory, Heon touched a metal stick to a shiny metal plate, producing an arc of light and a shower of sparks. Some piece of equipment that Inji didn't recognize, let out a puff of steam that joined a layer of fog along the ceiling. The room felt very humid. Inji turned the handle for the extractor and the fog began to disappear.

"Hi Heon!"

He turned around, the lines on his face lighting up under the glass mask. He still had the sparkling rod in his hand, connected by wires to a large box on the floor. Inji approached him carefully. She had once experienced how it hurt to get touched by one of the sparks and it was not something she wanted to feel again. Heon held the rod far away with one hand and pulled her close to give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek like he always did. He glanced over her shoulder to Gilaan, who had stopped at the door and looking nervous. Inji waved her over and introduced her to Heon.

"I know who you are," Heon mumbled, "I've seen you before in school."

"I've seen you too..." Gilaan sounded very unlike herself, shy and quiet.

Inji had to suppress a giggle but could not stop her lights from flashing her amusement. Gilaan glared at her from the side.

"Gilaan helped me in the library with the documents that Cirn got from storage."

Heon stared at Gilaan as if he saw her for the first time.

"You like that kind of stuff?"

Gilaan suddenly seemed to snap back to her old self and snarkily answered, "Oh, you mean the stuff about science and tech that my pretty little head can't handle?"

Heon looked absolutely stunned by her reply.

"No! No, I didn't mean that! I thought..." He shut his mouth with a pop, realizing that there was no safe way out of this conversation. The lines on his face screamed in lilac light, even visible under his protective frock. Only his left arm stayed dark, the lines dead by the sunscar.

Gilaan glared at him for a few seconds and then burst into laughter.

"It's ok, I'm just making fun of you."

"Oh," Heon relaxed and his lights calmed down, "I... I'm glad that you..." he pulled his shoulders back and gestured to his experiments’ table. "Would you like to see what I did?"

"Yes, I'd love to," Gilaan said with a smile.

Both took a step over to the table and Heon showed her how he made the sparks and explained to her how he stored the energy in the big box. While he was talking to Gilaan, Inji went over to a glass case with a mesh on top. The case sat next to one of the steam pipes where Heon had placed lumi-fungi all over the wall next to it and a gas lantern too. Inside the glass case, on top of a pile of shriveled leaves and a piece of bark, sat a small animal.

The animal had green skin with little scales with brown edges,  four legs and a long tail. It used its long, pink tongue to drag food into its mouth. Inji had seen it chew on some leaves but it had looked the happiest when she had given it a worm and some crawlers. She found the animal nine days ago on an exploration with the cave surveyors. It laid on the ground, one leg at an awkward angle. She had picked it up when no one was looking and hid it in her bag. She thought it was dead but when she had taken it out in the laboratory, it had opened its eyes and looked at her.

She had straightened its leg as best as she could by comparing it to its other legs and wrapped a bandage around it. After five days, it seemed to have healed enough to use the leg again but it did not look well. The scales looked dull and some were sticking out. The animal was pressing its body against the glass on the side, where the steam pipe warmed the glass. It had partly covered itself with leaves.

"Are you cold, little guy?" she whispered and carefully took him in her hand.

The skin of the animal felt cold and dry, unlike when she had found him. It had felt warmer back then. Gilaan appeared beside her, staring at the it and pulsing in fear.

"What is that?"

"I'm not sure, but I think..." she exchanged a look with Heon who shrugged his shoulders, "I think it's from the surface."

"The surface?" Gilaan exclaimed, jumping backwards in panic and almost knocking Heon over. She was shaking, her lines pulsing. "An animal form the surface? Do you even _know_ how dangerous that is? It could be poisonous, it could be sick, _you_ could get sick from it. How did you get it?"

"I found him, nine days ago and I haven't gotten sick so far." Inji put the animal on her stomach and it wiggled a little. She took that as a good sign, at least it felt alive again. "He was inside the cave that we had to survey but I don't think he really lives there."

Heon still had his arm around Gilaan's shoulder after he had caught her in her panicky jump backwards. Now, he gently pushed her forward towards Inji and stretched out his hand to stroke the little head that was peeking out of Inji's robe. Gilaan wanted to pull him back but he soothed her with his lights. She watched him stroke the head and then felt brave enough to try it herself.

"He is so dry! I thought he would be slimy."

The little animal tilted his head at the sound of her voice. His pink tongue peeked out and licked over the line on her finger. She shrieked and jumped backwards again. That only caused her to press herself deeper into Heon’s form but he didn't look like he minded.

Inji grinned, "I call him Squick. I wanted to find out what kind of animal he is but I think he doesn't like it down here."

"It's probably too dark," Heon said. "If he is from the surface, he is used to the sunlight and the lumi-fungi are just not bright enough."

Inji carefully stroked Squick's head and giggled when he licked the bright lines on her finger. "I should bring him back. He can't live here."

"No, he can't!" Gilaan called out with determination, "you will get in so much trouble if someone finds him here, both of you will. This is surface contamination, do you have any idea what that means? My father had a case like that once. That person brought plants back from the surface and a whole cityblock got sick from some stuff they emitted. That person went to jail!"

Gilaan's parents both were solicitors and gave legal counsel at court. Gilaan always knew what kind of stuff could get one in trouble, she had many stories to tell. Inji frowned, she hadn’t even thought about that. She was aware that people were afraid of the surface and of contamination but she had ignored that there could also be real consequences. She was endangering her friends, again.

"I will take him back."

"Back to the cave?" Heon asked.

"No, back to the surface, he will die in the cave."

Gilaan shrieked so loud that her voice cracked, "The surface? Are you insane? You can't take him to the surface! it's dangerous and illegal! And the sun! For the love of all the fates, isn't the scar in your face enough? The sunlight -- "

" -- I'll wear a hood and a mask," Inji called out, trying to raise her voice over Gilaan's without shrieking. "And I will go when the sun is down, the starlight won't hurt me."

Gilaan took a deep breath and lowered her voice, "How can you be sure of that?"

Inji took the stack of papers and folders from the table that they had brought with them from the library.

"Didn't you read any of the documents we copied today?" She picked out a sheet of parchment where she copied a drawing and writings from the original parchments. "This here is from Melko'Tokarn himself. He describes how he watched the stars and he drew a map of the stars he could see. Not one word about the starlight hurting him, nothing about him getting sick."

"Still, you don't know what kind of contamination you get out there and you could bring dangerous particles with you. Think about it, everybody could get sick!" Gilaan tried to keep her voice calm but her lines showed how agitated she was.

Inji had to admit that Gilaan had a point. She couldn't just take a rope and climb upwards. Back when she was little, she had gotten into trouble but as a child she didn't get much punishment. Now she was almost an adult, she couldn't hide behind being a child and not knowing better anymore.

"You're right. If I go outside, I have to leave the stuff I wore behind and I have to go when the sun is down. I have to find out when that is and I’ll need an opening where I can really go outside." She handed Squick to a slightly shocked Gilaan and went to a closet next to the table. Heon had emptied it out for her so that she could leave some of her stuff there.

She pulled out a map that was a copy of one of the old maps from her grandfather. She was pretty good at reading those maps by now. She knew the little signs and marks her grandfather left on his maps, things that he didn't transfer to the official maps. She had added her own details to the maps, as far as she could on the survey tours with the Explorers. Sometimes she explored on her own but she had to keep that a secret.

The cave where she and Heon had gotten their scars was still the best option in her opinion. She knew now that it was an outer cave and the hole they had found back then was actually part of a larger cave that opened to the outside. It was closed off now but the outline of the cave on her grandfathers map hinted at a second access point. She just had to get to the other side of the cave first and then move up.

"I need a protective coat with a hood, a mask and filter, rope, my crossbow,..." she murmured to herself, putting things out on the table. One of the lockers contained protective coats that had hoods, so she laid one of them on the table, adding it to her other stuff. She kept staring at it when she noticed that Gilaan and Heon looked at her angrily.

"What?"

Heon took two other coats from the locker and put them next to hers.

"Do you really think that we would let you go alone?" he retorted.

He put more rope on the pile and added a portable extractor with a crank. Gilaan set Squick back into his glass box and rummaged through the tool drawers and picked out things and put them on the table.

"Really, Inji, don't get any silly ideas," she said firmly. She found a small bag and stuffed some of the leaves from the glass box into it. "We are coming with you."

"No!" Inji protested, "you can't come with me! It's dangerous and I don't even know where I can get outside or if the sun is up or not."

She began to panic, her lights pulsing rapidly. She truly had no idea what she was doing and how she could possibly dare to go out on the surface. The last thing she needed was to worry about her friends.

"Don't argue," Heon soothed as he pulled her into a firm hug and held her until she relaxed. When her lights had calmed down, he leaned back to look into her eyes, his own shining with a hint of green. "I'm not letting you do this alone and it looks like Gilaan here isn't either. So don't argue, we are going to help you, no matter what you say."

Gilaan stepped over to them and wrapped her arms around both of them. They stayed like that for a while, hugging, holding each other. Inji felt a happy calmness flood through her.

"Okay," she whispered, "okay. Thank you." She squeezed her friends once more. They stepped apart, hands sliding down arms. Inji took another bag from the closet and began to put the things inside it. "We need something for our faces to protect us against the sun."

"We can't go outside if the sun is up, that is too dangerous!" Heon said.

"But we have to have something," she said, "the sun might come up while we are out there and we might have to cover our faces quickly."

Gilaan took one of the breathing masks in her hands.

"What about these? We will wear them anyway, so maybe if we attach something to it and attach the hood to it..."

Heon jumped over to a shelf and pulled out a few more things.

"Professor 'Emell gave me some pieces of dark glass recently. Give me a few minutes, I can fix them to a frame and attach fabric around it. It will cover our faces and we can look through the dark glass, even when the sun is up."

"Are you sure?" Gilaan held a dark glass pane against a gas light. The light was just a dim spot as it shone through the glass.

"Well, it's only a guess, of course. We will test it... right up there in the sun!"

Heon looked almost a bit scared by his own enthusiasm. He turned to his workbench and practically dove into the wires and fabric. When Heon found a new project, the world around him disappeared. He began fitting the rectangular pieces of dark glasses into wireframes; bolting fabric to the sides and mumbling to himself, when he was suddenly startled by a hand on his back. Gilaan stood next to him and held a piece of wire still so that he could solder it in place. He looked at her in stunned disbelief.

"Hurry up!" said Gilaan, "we only have a few hours left until we will be missed. At least that's the case for me."

Inji didn't even know what time it was and if she had promised to be home at a certain point. "I don't know... we could send messages maybe?"

"Good idea." Gilaan left the workbench and scribbled a message on a piece of parchment. "So I'm writing down that we’re all working together here on a special project for school and it will take the rest of the day. How long will the trip to the cave take?"

She looked at Inji.

"Hmm, we need at least an hour to get to the industrial cave. Then maybe another hour to get to the other side and probably half an hour to climb up to the access point I saw on the map. Once there, we have to put on the coats, open the tunnel and climb outside. That could take another three hours and then we have to get back and close it all up and hide the coats and..."

Gilaan’s eyes widened as she now realized the scope of the project.

"So it's more like a whole up- and low-cycle. I think, I have to prepare my parents for that, call it an excursion or something so that they expect me to stay over low-cycle."

She looked from one to the other. Heon had stopped working on the masks to nod at her.

"Yes, we should probably tell our parents that we are going on a trip together. A project about the state of the lumi-fungi in the industrial caves, how does that sound?"

He looked over to each of them. They all nodded, even though Inji had a few doubts how much her parents would actually believe that story. She wasn't exactly known for her interest in biology. She looked down at the small creature in the box and realized another problem.

"What about Squick? He doesn't look too good, what if he doesn't survive that long?"

Gilaan went over to the glassbox where the little animal leaned against the glass next to the steampipe again. "We have to keep him warmer. He's probably used to a much higher temperature than us."

Heon searched through one of the cupboards and came to Squick's glass case with a heating pad. He connected it to the steam system and placed it at the bottom of the box, under a piece of fabric. They watched the little animal as he seemed to become livelier. He began to move around, inspecting his clear prison.

"I think this really works," Inji said, "that was a good idea. Hopefully he can live like that for one more day-cycle. He probably still needs the sunlight but at least he isn't cold anymore."

"Could he be dependent upon sunlight?" Gilaan asked her. Heon had already returned to his workbench and lit up a tiny blowtorch.

"I think that's very likely. Think about the vines we grow, they depend on the light from the lumi-fungi. A plant or an animal from the surface probably depends on the light from the sun. I doubt they have lumi-fungi up there," Inji answered as she let her finger trail over the back of the scaly little guy.

He leaned his head against her finger for a second but then began to sniff at the corners of his prison. She took a second lantern, lit it up and hung it over the wire mesh on top of the glass case. Squick angled his head to look at the lightsource and then climbed on top of the piece of bark to get as close as possible to the lantern. There he settled down and closed his eyes. Inji sighed with relief.

"I think he feels better now but he can't live down here in the long run. He needs the sun."

Crackling and hissing came from Heon's workbench as he soldered another piece of wire to the glasspane. Gilaan and Inji took pieces of fabric and flexible bands, trying to find a way of affixing them to their heads so that it would hold the glass screen but still be comfortable.

It took them many tries and many pieces of fabric until they had constructed something that held the dark glass in front of their eyes. Then he clipped on the straps of the breathing mask. As the bell for the low-cycle rang, they had finished three workable protectors and attached them to their masks. They looked at each other. Their faces were completely covered on the front and the rest would be hidden by the hood of the coat.

Inji looked around, the room was very dark through the glass and her visual range was reduced because the frame covered the sides. Heon had said that he would experiment with the dark glass and try to get it to bend. He just needed to find out how hot he could make it for that. To Inji, that meant he planned on going to the surface again and that filled her with tickling happiness. Gilaan also spoke from the next time they would go up there. Inji hugged her on that remark, hiding a few tears dripping on her shoulder. Gilaan took both their hands and squeezed them.

"I'm glad to be part of this, really, thank you for taking me with you." Gilaan smiled with moist eyes and placed a kiss on each of her friends’ cheeks. "Now, we have to tell our parents that we are going on an excursion at the start of the up-cycle. I also have two classes that I have to cancel. What about you two?"

"No classes for me," Inji shook her head.

Heon also shook his head. His mouth hung slightly open and he stared at his hand in Gilaan's hand. Inji suppressed a giggle. Gilaan smiled brightly, well aware of the effect she had on the young man.

"So, we all convince our parents that we will be gone for one full up- and low-cycle and meet back here in the morning. I have to go home now," Gilaan said.

Heon finally found his voice again, it sounded a bit rougher than usual, "I want to work on the masks some more."

Inji took a little glass out of her bag that held a few worms she had found.

"Let me just feed these to Squick and then I come with you," she said to Gilaan.

She dumped the worms into the box and watched as Squick lazily stretched out his tongue, pulling one of the small worms into his mouth. It looked like he didn't even open his eyes.

She turned around. "Tomorrow, morning gong, right here."

“Yes!” Gilaan and Heon both replied enthusiastically.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big Kudos to illusionsfire76 for editing this story.


	6. Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go again, welcome back dear readers! Let's start our adventure.

* * *

_(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)_

_ Diary of Inji'Zora Jerall _

_Today is the day! We managed to convince our parents that we have to do a science project together: watching and recording the growth of tegilda-vines under different lumi-fungi. It sounds like the most boring thing ever but they believed us. Mother gave me some extra food and a new pair of sturdy pants, made for climbing. Very thoughtful and perfect for our real project. I'm so excited! We're gonna see the stars! At least I hope it's the stars. I tried to guess when the sun would be up by catching a look at one of the light tunnels in the physics-lab but they chased me out. So hopefully when we get to the surface, we will see the stars. I can't wait!_

_(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)_

 

"Go!" 

Inji tried to make her voice heard without being overly loud. They had waited for quite some time now at the entrance to the industrial cave for people to go away. A group of workers had stopped right at the gate and Inji didn't dare to walk past them. They surely would ask why three teenagers wanted to enter the industrial area. Finally, the group dissipated and the friends scurried through the gate and ran through the tunnel as fast and quiet as they could. Inside, they pressed themselves against the wall into the darkness. But they were lucky, the next shift had already started and the walkways were empty. 

Inji hurriedly waved her friends along, they needed to get to the other side of the cave. The sound of the steam machines echoed through the cave like the stomping of a thousand boots. Which in their favor, hiding the sound of their footsteps. Inji really hoped that they wouldn’t meet anybody along the way. She had tried to come up with a good excuse for their presence all morning but couldn't think of anything convincing. Her only hope was that no one would ask them.

While Heron and Inji were quiet, Gilaan had hardly stopped talking since they met. Since her friends didn’t react to her stream of thoughts, she had turned her attention to Squick. The animal sat in a small bag on her hip, and since they were alone, she let his head peek out and explained everything around them to him. 

"You see there? That is a lumi-fungi that we use to mark pathways and such. It gives off a blue light but it's not bright enough for farming. And see there? That's another lumi-fungi that we use for the pathways too but the light is more green. Unfortunately, you don't really like them, do you? That's why we're gonna..."

Inji sighed exasperatedly, "Gilaan, please!"

"What?" 

"I'm sure Squick is quite entertained by all that but I'm about to push you off the walkway." 

"Fine," Gilaan said and lifted Squick to her face and whispered something to him. She seemed to have lost her panic about getting contaminated by him, because it looked like she was actually kissing the little guy. She pushed him gently down into the pouch and pulled the drawstring tight. "Then I’ll talk to you guys and don't you dare ignore me."

Heon looked a little scared but he came up beside her and asked what she wanted to talk about. It was quite obvious that Gilaan's constant stream of thought was a sign of her nervousness. Heon put his arm over her shoulder and managed to calm her down. Inji was glad that he took care of her, she was quite nervous herself and not even capable of calming herself down. Despite her nervousness, she was also excited. The explorations with the survey group were fun but this was so much better! She felt like a real explorer, on the way to new discoveries. 

She gestured to her friends to stop and looked around. They needed to get up a few levels, leaving the big walkway and get to one of the access bridges. She strapped her bag tighter and pulled herself up into the scaffolding. Heon and Gilaan followed her. The upper access bridge was smaller and wobbled a little but at least they wouldn't meet any workers here. It took them over an hour to finally reach the end of the access bridge. The scaffolding was rough with large gaps and Inji climbed up halfway to look out. When she stretched her neck, she could see the ledge she was looking for and gestured to her friends to follow her up.

"Inji?" Gilaan's voice sounded a bit shrill. "That doesn't look quite safe. Are you sure...?"

"We're not going to find a walkway to go out there, Gilaan. We have to really climb now." 

She jammed her foot behind a bar and leaned outwards to aim her crossbow towards the top ridge. She pulled the trigger, letting the rope fly out and the hook caught behind the ridge. She tied it to the scaffolding and attached her friends safety ropes and her own to it. Now the real climb started. They were quiet as they pulled themselves over the scaffolding. The construction curved over the top and they were hanging from them like vines. The progress was slow and more than once, at least one of them lost their grip on the slippery bars. One time, Heon managed to grab Inji's third finger just in time before she fell down, luckily the noise of the machines hid her scream.

Gilaan had started to talk to herself again, it was her way of coping. She kept talking to Squick but she did not let him look out of the bag. 

"I hope you appreciate what we're doing here, little guy," she mumbled quietly. 

Inji grinned at her over her shoulder, pulling away some moss and vines to get a better grip on the scaffolding. 

"Wouldn't it be ironic if we did all this to bring Squick outside and then some big surface animal comes along and eats him?"

Heon snorted. "Nice, Inji, way to go with the pep talk!" 

"But it would be ironic."

Gilaan flashed her indignation so bright, she lit up the whole top of the cave for a second. "Yes, Inji, very ironic. Now, shut it."

"Sorry," Inji apologized as her lines lit up in embarrassment. Sometimes she didn't know if something was appropriate to say or not. 

"We love you anyway, don't worry about it," Gilaan's laugh echoed through the cave but her lights were bright and calm. "And I will tell Squick that you didn't mean it that way."

Inji swallowed and felt her skin warm up. She was so glad that both of her friends were with her. They had finally reached the ledge that she wanted to get to. She pulled herself up and turned around to help Heon and Gilaan up. The ledge was quite narrow but the wall behind it had a concave dent. This was the area where Inji wanted to get through, she assumed that this was a natural opening, they just had to break through that wall.

"This is it?" Heon asked.

"I think this is our best chance, yes," Inji said, taking off her bag to pull out the protective coats. 

She waited until they all wore their coats, then took a lantern from the bag and lit it up. She also took a pickaxe head from the bag and attached the handle to it. She had separated them to not raise suspicion. If someone would have seen them carrying a pickaxe around, it would have been hard to explain.

Heon did the same with his own pickaxe and Gilaan pulled a heavy piece of tarp from her bag and held it up. They hoped to muffle the sound a bit with that and also prevent bits and dust from falling to the bottom alerting anyone to their presence. The sound of the machines was quite loud up here but they still froze when they heard the sound of their pickaxes crash against the wall for the first time. It was so loud! They anxiously looked over the edge of the ledge, to see if anybody came out of the plants to check where the sound came from but nobody came. Inji lifted her pickaxe again. 

"Let's hit it on the beat of the machines," she said and listened for the thumping of the plant below them. 

It was a good rhythm, they could hit it on every second beat. Inji started, she slammed the pickaxe against the wall on one, Heon hit on two, Inji on three and Heon on four and so on. For the longest time it looked like they had no effect at all. A few crumbs fell off the wall, making a small dent but nothing that made them think that they would break through there any time soon. Inji let her pickaxe drop, she was exhausted. Heon hit the wall twice more and then had to stop too. They were both drenched in sweat, their lights dull. Gilaan lowered the tarp and gave them both water to drink.

"What if it doesn't work?" Inji asked quietly. What if the wall was thicker than she anticipated? What if it was a dead end, not an access to the surface? 

"Not so fast with the giving up," Heon said, "we will have to try a bit longer." He took another gulp from the water bottle and gave it back to Gilaan. "Let's give it some more." 

He raised the pickaxe again, waited for the rhythm of the steam machines and slammed it against the wall again. Inji did the same and they worked the hole deeper into the wall. By now, the chunks and clumps formed a small pile at the bottom and they were completely covered in dust. Heon swung the pickaxe back and crashed it into the wall with all the force he could manage. The pickaxe got stuck in the hole and a different sound could be heard. It sounded like crackling of fire. Cracks appeared, growing from the hole in the blink of an eye. Inji slammed her pickaxe next to Heon's helping to loosen it that way. The wall made a strange sound like a sigh. The cracks travelled further outward and they all backed away as far as the ledge would let them. Another sigh came from the rocks and in a few moments, the wall was gone. There was a hole in the wall, big enough to crawl through. It was dark on the other side and Inji felt her despair grow. This was not an exit to the outside. 

Gilaan gasped, "By the fates. The air! Do you smell that?"

"What?" 

Inji stepped forward and took a breath next to the hole. It smelled cool but dry, much dryer than the air normally would be and there was a strange aroma to it, spices she had never smelled before. Heon suddenly pulled her back. 

"Your mask! That is surface air. You have to wear your mask!"

"Oh, yes." 

Inji pulled out the mask and tightened the straps around her head. With the filter, she could not smell the spicy aromas anymore but the air was still very different, so dry. It smelled so different. So... different. Gilaan and Heon affixed the masks to their faces. Gilaan took a breath through the mask and looked disappointed. 

"I can't smell it anymore, it was so nice," she sighed. 

Heon flashed his lights at her.

"We still don't want to get sick," he grumbled, and pulled the straps tight. "We’re lucky. This must be the nighttime. No sunlight to burn us." He stepped to the side and gestured to Inji. "You want to go in? Or rather, _out_?"

"Oh yes!" Inji flashed her lights brightly. 

She pulled her coat tight around her and stuck her head through the hole. The darkness was creepy since there were no lumi-fungi anywhere. She pulled back and took the lantern to hold it in front of her. She calmed herself down and peeked her head through the hole again. She was in another cave, curving to the right. Below the hole, she could see the ground and it wasn’t too far down. She had feared that they might have opened up the hole in the ceiling and had to rappel down. But she could just step through, cautiously testing the ground with her feet. It felt hard, rough. She had expected moss or some other vegetation but it just felt like hard rockface. She climbed through and helped her friends to join her.

"There has to be an exit,” Gilaan said as she looked around. “This cave is different than any I have ever been in." 

She boldly stepped forward as far as the light of the lantern reached. Inji was slightly disappointed at the darkness. She had expected light and she wanted to see something. She walked up to Gilaan, the light forming a bright circle around them and they slowly walked forward. The cave made a curve to the right side and got quite narrow at the tip of that curve. Inji stepped in front, holding the lantern to light up the ground in front of her feet. A gust of wind blew in her face; cold and sharp that made her look up and she froze in awe. Behind her, her friends stepped through the narrow path and she heard them gasp as well. 

In front of them, the cave opened up to the outside. It formed a big dark circle around the most incredible sight they had ever seen. The world opened in front of them, littered with bright dots of lights. It was just like Inji's grandfather had said. Inji sat the lantern down and took the last few steps to get further away from the cave. There was sand under her feet and she heard the steps of her friends following her. Gilaan took her hand and from the other side Heon took her other hand. Together, they left the cave completely and stepped out.

The dark blue canvas stretched out all around them, eternal, unending. In front of them the ground was mostly flat, gentle bumps and hills with vegetation between them. The mountain range ended here. Inji slowly looked up and almost fell backwards. There was no end, nothing over them but dark blueness with bright spots.

"Stars!" she whimpered, squeezing her friends hands. "Look up! Stars! Look how many there are... the sky, the stars!" 

She could not grasp the magnitude, the sheer size of it. She had never in her life looked so far out, so far into an endless distance. She had imagined the stars to be like the light spots the lumi-fungi made on the walls in the caves, little dots she could almost touch, but it was so different. The stars looked like they danced right in front of her eyes and endlessly far out at the same time. 

She looked away from the sky to look at her friends. Even though their faces were half hidden behind the breathing masks, she knew that their mouths hung open. Their eyes were wide and bright and all of them pulsed a rhythm of wonder with all the lines on their bodies. Gilaan made a strange noise and Inji felt her tremble. She pointed out front. 

"Look how far... it doesn't end," she whimpered, "it's so much bigger than we thought."

"What is so much bigger?" Heon asked, his voice rough.

"Our world. This planet," Gilaan replied as she pulled them forward to a few rocks and sat down. Inji and Heon did the same. The rocks felt good, familiar, and the permanent feeling of dizziness abated. "It's almost frightening, it's so big and empty."

"Yes, I feel so small when I look up and there is no ceiling," Inji said. "But the stars, so beautiful and so many. I had no idea there would be so many!" 

She leaned back again slowly to look up, preparing herself for that strange feeling of vertigo. The stars danced in front of her eyes, sparkling in many colors. She kept staring at the stars when suddenly they moved. A hand on her back and Heon's voice brought her back to reality. She had fallen backwards and would have bumped her head if Heon had not caught her.

"Careful, Inji, don't forget to breathe," Heon reminded her and sat her upright again. "Don't stare up all the time, it makes you dizzy."

"Yes..." Inji slowly breathed in. 

Even with the filters, the air was very different, much drier. It made her throat feel parched. She fumbled for her waterbottle and looked down. She noticed that Gilaan still had the little bag on her belt and she remembered why they had taken up this whole adventure.

"I think we should let Squick out now. That's what we came here for," Inji said.

Gilaan looked at her with shining eyes. 

"Oh right, I'd forgotten about him." 

She unhooked the bag and opened it. Squick peeked out his scaly head and sniffed. Inji thought he looked like he was recognizing the way the air smelled but that was probably just her imagination.

"Come on, little guy, we brought you home," Gilaan whispered, gently shaking him out of the bag. The animal looked out but was not overly eager to leave the bag. He moved his legs very slowly.

"I think he is still cold." Heon said. 

"What is that? What is happening there?" Gilaan gasped as she jumped up and pointed to a spot far away from them. 

They both stood up to look in the direction she was pointing. At the line where the sky met the ground, the color of the sky changed. An orange line with a green border appeared, hazy on the edges. The colors stretched out and the sky changed from dark blue to a lighter blue with a hint of purple. As they watched, the orange line became wider and turned white. They stared at it until it started to hurt their eyes.

"The sun!" Inji cried out and rummaged in her bag for the protective glass that Heon had built. "The sun is coming up, quick, protect your eyes!" 

The sky was now a light blue and the sun appeared as an incredibly bright ball of orange. Inji held the dark glass in front of her eyes as she fumbled with the straps and buttons. Even through the dark glass, it was impossible to look directly at the sun. As the rays of the sun crept towards them, the ground began to glow with its heat.

She turned around. Behind them, the tips of the mountains lit up in bright orange. The light slowly moved down towards them as the sun kept rising. It all happened much quicker than Inji had anticipated. Heon and Gilaan helped each other to fix the glass frame to the mask and they all pulled their hoods over their heads. The sunlight touched them now and it was impossibly warm. Gilaan held Squick into the sunlight. The little guy stretched his legs and the scales on his neck and back began to flutter. He instantly looked better, his scales shimmering green and blue.

Gilaan set him down on the rocks and they could see that the sun warming him up made him more agile. After a few minutes, he stretched his back and wandered off towards a little bundle of grass between the rocks. He stopped there and raised his throat towards the sun. With a little shudder, he looked around and ran off.

They were now fully in the sunlight. It became unbearably warm under their hoods. They stepped back towards the cave, desperate for some of its shadow. Inji's eyes burned, irritated by the sunlight, even behind the dark glass. She was sweating and she could see that her friends weren’t much better off. The sun made the air even dryer and she could feel her tongue sticking to her gums. She needed to drink some water and wanted to lift the mask to put the bottle under it, but Heon stopped her. 

"Not here, we don't know what's in the air," he warned.

"It's so dry and so hot," Inji moaned.

She saw that Gilaan was flickering irregularly, probably just as hot and thirsty as she was. She was swaying and Inji grabbed her arm and pulled her backside against her to steady her. Heon grabbed them both and pulled them back into the cave until they were in the shade again. 

"The sun," he mumbled in awe, "it's not even really up yet and already so warm! So much energy. Think about what we could do with that..." He started looking in his bag, searching for something. Gilaan was still swaying, leaning her weight against Inji. Heon huffed angrily, "I don't have my spectrometer here, why didn’t I take that with me?"

Inji punched his arm to get his attention. 

"We will come back here and you can set up all your toys then. But we have to go back now, the sun is dangerous." She was a little worried about Gilaan -- her friend’s lines were dull and she was panting. Inji took one last longing look at the blinding light of the desert outside. 

"Farewell, Squick, have fun." 

Then she turned and helped Gilaan back to the narrow entrance. She had to take off the glass to see in the sudden lack of light. They paused in the comfortable darkness, letting it calm them down. Gilaan's breathing became deeper and more regular. Her lines slowly lit up again and when she took off the glass, Inji could see that her eyes were returning to their normal level of light. She let go of her and leaned her head against the hard wall. She felt a bit dizzy herself.

The magnitude of what they had just done slowly sank in. They had been on the surface, seen the stars and saw the sun rise over Rannoch. There were maybe three known quarians who had done that before. Even if a few other stories were never told, the number of quarians who had seen the surface was probably still countable on two or three hands. 

"We have to go back," Heon said. 

Inji nodded and searched Gilaan's face. She looked better now, her lines shining in light purple. Heon was already turning back towards the entrance hole. Inji stopped him from climbing in by grabbing his arm. 

"The coats, we have to leave them here," she said and he instantly understood. 

"Right, the coats." He suddenly flashed in panic. "We made a mistake! We will contaminate the cave!" He stood in front of the hole as if he wanted to prevent them or anything else to enter. "What if we make everyone sick? What if we bring something back?" 

He looked worse than Gilaan had. Inji had those worries herself but there wasn't anything they could do about it now. 

"We talked about that. That's why we put on the coats and took wipes with us, to clean us. That will have to do. We can't stay out here. We have to go back."

Gilaan stared at her, her eyes wide and bright, "What if we make people sick? Or the vines and lumi-fungi?" 

"We won't," Inji said with much more confidence than she really felt. 

She decided to ignore any speculation. They had to go back in, there was no alternative. She realized in that moment that, despite their preparations, they really had not thought this through. The plan of using overcoats had looked good in theory but in practise it was hardly enough to prevent any and all contamination. It was too late now, they just had to find a way to minimize the possible damages. Inji took off her coat, careful to not make too much movement. 

"Take off the coats," she ordered her friends, putting as much confidence into her voice as she could muster, "and don't stir up the dust and sand on it. We are going to leave the coats out here, use the wipes to clean each other off and leave those out here too. Then we climb back in and close the hole somehow." That was another detail they had conveniently blanked out while planning the adventure.

Her friends nodded and slipped out of their coats, letting them slide down into a bundle on the floor. Inji pushed them together and put rocks on top of them. They used the moist wipes that she had nicked from her parents cleaning closet and wiped each other off. They stood in a circle. Gilaan was wiping over her braids and down her back while Inji did the same to Heon and he was using the wipes on Gilaan's head and shoulders. It looked like a strange ritual. 

Finally they stopped, their movements getting slower with the realization that they had to go back now and just hope for a good outcome. Heon crawled through first, helping Gilaan coming through behind him. Inji lowered herself down to crawl through too but stopped and looked back. In a sudden urge, she took off the breathing mask and took one last breath of the dry and spicy air of the surface. She wanted to remember those scents forever.

She put the mask back on before finally crawling through the hole to join her friends on the other side. As she stepped out into the cave, she agonized over how they could close the hole so that it would not get discovered. Her eyes adjusted to the familiar darkness with the spotty carpets of lumi-fungi along the walls. She let her gaze travel up, feeling relief at the familiar end to her view. There were the stalactites, a pattern close enough to let the eyes rest on it, giving a frame to her worldview. 

Inji looked at her two companions who looked equally relieved at being inside again. Their lights, just like hers, were glowing with happiness. They took long sips from their water bottles as if it tasted like the sweetest juice. 

"So," she said, vaguely waving at the jagged hole in the rock face, "how do we close this?"

Gilaan flashed her lights at them in annoyance. 

"I can't believe neither of you have thought about this before. You are supposed to be the overly smart scientists here." 

She picked up the heavy piece of tarp that she had used before to cover up their opening operations, and motioned to Heron and Inji to hold it up over the hole. Then she took out three long iron nails from her bag and pounded them through the fabric to the rockface, timing her hammer blows with the thumping of the machines. Inji took off her mask and kissed Gilaan on her cheek. 

"You are brilliant!" she said. 

They piled rocks on the bottom of the fabric and closed the hole that way as best as they could. Gilaan used two more nails on each side, to attach the fabric around the hole. It sat tight now, preventing any flapping with the noticeable draft. 

"I think this is the best we can do," Inji said, trying to convince herself as much as her friends. "We need to get back. What time is it?" 

They needed to be off the walkways before the shift change occurred. Heon took out his timepiece and angled it towards the light of his arm. Inji noticed the darkness on his left arm once again, that familiar guilt creeping up again. At least it distracted her from the disconcerting thoughts about the contamination they could possibly bring into the caves. 

"We are close to shift change," Heon said, "we either hurry or we wait for it to pass." 

Inji pointed to the access bridge on the other side of the cave. "I think we could get over there and then wait. It might be a bit safer and we won't draw attention to this place." She gave both her friends a serious glare. "We have to keep this secret, no one can ever know that we did this."

Gilaan flashed in exasperation, "We are aware of that, Inji. No one will ever hear about this from me. Heon will crawl into his laboratory and never talk to anybody anyway unless we drag him out in the next few weeks." 

Heon looked at her in surprise but he didn't disagree. His lights were already pulsing, showing him deep in thought. Inji made him follow her as she took the lead in climbing back into the scaffolding, not trusting him to take up the lead in his distracted state. Gilaan followed them slowly. She appeared much more secure in her movements, climbing like she had never done anything else. 

The swinging access bridge gave them a welcomed break. Inji's arms and hands had gotten tired and her friends looked like they felt the same. They drank their water and Inji shared the food her parents had given them. Deep under them, the workers spilled out of the factories, filling the walkways. The noises of them echoed in the cave. Inji kept looking up, assuring herself of the safety of the ceiling.

Gilaan stopped eating and took Heon's hand and Inji's in hers. "Thank you, friends. I never dreamt I would see the stars one day. Thanks for taking me along, Inji."

"I'm glad you were there with me." 

"But it was your dream," Gilaan said, "I didn't even know that such a dream could exist." She squeezed her friend’s hand. "You have given me a new dream, new ideas. Thank you."

"It was my pleasure," Inji whispered, "I'm glad that you both came with me. I couldn't have done it without you." 

Heon's lines lit up in bright white. "This has been the best adventure ever. One day, we will go up there again with tools and devices and we will be discoverers!"

Inji raised her water bottle. "To being discoverers!"

"Discoverers!" answered her friends. 

Inji's lines flickered with all the emotions she felt. This had been the greatest day of her life and she had shared it with the best friends in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awesome editor: illusionsfire76. Applause!!


	7. Grow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! 
> 
> Another part of this story. Once again we start with a section of the diary and then go right back into the story. 
> 
> A bit of time has passed, the kids are about 18 or 20 years old I would say. Of course, they can't measure their age by years as they don't have a way of recording the rotation around the sun, so I'm assuming that they measure the passage of time by the changes in the fungi vegetation. This is one of the things that make writing this story so interesting and difficult, I can't use many expressions and descriptions because it just doesn't work for an underground society.
> 
> In case you stumble over the word _waveat_ , that is a kind of radio, a new invention. This is supposed to hint at that their society is beginning to leave the steam age and enters the electrification age.

 

* * *

 

_(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)_

_ Diary of Inji'Zora Jerall, age 21 Changes _

_Final exams and independent projects. College is really asking a lot of us. Heon hasn't left the lab in days. Even Gilaan is a bit worried and has been studying until she falls asleep at the desk. We had another round of shortages, the protein cakes are tasting worse everyday. That actually gave me an idea and Gilaan and I have been working on a new project in the biology lab._

_(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)_

"So, what do we have?" Inji asked as she came into the lab. 

Almost every morning since they had started working together in the experimental farming lab, Gilaan was already there when Inji arrived. She tried to get in as early as Gilaan, she really did, but she could never do it. Mornings were just not for her, she could barely form a coherent sentence about an hour after she got up. Gilaan on the other hand, got up and switched to _Awake!_ in five seconds. She started talking and analyzing things she had apparently thought about in her sleep while her feet were still under her blankets. 

Since they had moved in with each other, Inji had learned to tune out Gilaan’s morning chatter and Gilaan had accepted that Inji would never talk in the morning. Heon usually got up when Gilaan got up too. He liked listening to her voice even though he himself didn't say much. Heon also got up with a million ideas in his head but while Gilaan needed to talk about her ideas, Heon quietly worked through his in his mind over breakfast. Inji woke up with nothing in her head and it took her at least an hour to get any coherent thought even started.

"Hello my pretty, pretty pretty pretty!" Gilaan sang cheerfully, the music from the waveat giving her a melody to sing along to. She always turned on the waveat first thing in the morning and she knew every song that they played on the shows. Yet again she was in a wonderful good mood. There had been many occasions where Inji just wanted to punch her in the face because of her annoying cheerfulness. 

"Alright, " Inji sighed and twisted the big button on the waveat to turn it off. "Please tell me we have some results. I would really like to impress Professor Marlgin for a change." 

She walked over to the test beds. Each was a bed of dirt on a table under a rag of fabric full of lumi-fungi. Marlgrin's group studied the effects of different kinds of lumi-fungi on the vegetation. They had been doing that for years but recently, in light of the protein shortages, the professor had focused the research on the farming vines. 

Gilaan and Inji had been assigned the Lorey-vine, a slow growing vine with thick arms and leaves of a blueish-green color. The plant produced stems with small white flowers that produced tiny, very sticky seeds. These seeds were the source for the protein viands that formed the base of the quarian diet. It was important research: getting the vines to grow faster and produce more seeds could be the solution to the protein shortages. But the vine grew very slowly and every test with different colored lumis took months to produce a result. It made Inji wonder if biology had been the right career choice for her and her impatience. 

Gilaan sighed and stepped over to her with her slate, some of her notorious good mood had disappeared. 

"You're not going to like this," she said, holding a parchment next to the slate to compare the numbers. "The difference between Nerbar-lumi and Olden-lumi is negligible. The vines grow 2% faster under the light of Olden-lumi, so they might react to the waves in the blue spectrum but it's not enough to really make a difference." 

This result was not really surprising, Inji had to admit, but still incredibly frustrating. They had determined in long, long test series that the vine reacted to light in the colder spectrum by growing faster. The blue light was the result of one of Heon's experiments; he was using electric currents to make new lanterns among other things. Heon had turned to physics, especially the pysicis of light, and Inji sometimes envied him for the spectacular things he got to do. His group had managed to turn the lightwaves of the lumi-fungi into electric currents. The waveat was a direct result of that discovery. The transmitters ran on the energy that the lumi-fungi all over the caves produced. For the waveat to work, it just needed to be placed close to a wall. 

The sender for the waveat system needed more energy, it ran on normal steam engines and was the pride and glory of Mekken. The city-cave Mekken had a new and very young mayor and he had jumped at the opportunity to install the first sender in the caves in his city. Luckily the Knowledge Cave was close enough to Mekken to still have reception. The music and shows on the waveat sometimes were the only things that kept Inji from going insane inside the lab. 

Heon had managed to store energy in a chemical solution and had powered a new kind of lantern with it. The light it produced was much colder, bluer than the light from the gas lanterns and the vines had reacted well to it. Unfortunately, the blue lantern only worked for about an hour but it took almost three days to refill the energy storage again. So, Inji and Gilaan had tried to find lumis that produced blue light and placed the vines under them. It had been a great idea but a 2% increase in growth was just not significant enough. Inji had helped refine the chemicals in the energy storage so there was nothing to improve on that side. If they wanted to improve the growth rate, they needed to find another light source and Inji had an idea about that.

"I think now is the time for a 'crazy idea'," she said with a smile spreading across her face. 

Gilaan flashed back at her, grumbling, "They won't let us, I told you."

"Then we won't ask!" Inji said conspiratorially.

"We have to! We can't just use the light tunnel without asking!" Gilaan's lines flashed angrily. 

Inji delivered her already prepared kill shot of her argument and let her lights pulse smugly. "If we had asked, we never would have seen the stars!"

Gilaan froze and her lights stopped pulsing. Even she still spoke of the stars, of the vastness of the sky. It had been the greatest adventure for all of them. Some nights all three of them huddled together in one bed and told each other what they remembered from their trip to the surface. Even though it had been pure luck that they'd not gotten sick or contaminated the caves, they did not regret doing it. 

Gilaan sighed, "So you want us to sneak into the lab and then what? We need to test the light for more than a few hours and we can't just set up a test bed there without anybody noticing."

"Why not?" Inji asked with a shrug. "There's one side of the light tunnel that is completely unused. If we just act like we know what we're doing, nobody will question us. We can just say that it's part of our experiments." 

"So we lie?" Gilaan said with all the annoyance that her lines reflected. "That sounds like a great career decision." 

"We don't lie, we just don't ask," Inji said but she already knew that she had won. 

Gilaan was already making a mental list of the things they needed to take with them. Inji could see it in the way the lines on her arms slowed down. Inji rolled a cart over to the test beds and moved a smaller one, with only one plant growing from it, over onto the cart. She pinched off the connectors with clamps and put a sheet over the vine to protect it. 

Gilaan sighed, accepting her fate and packed a shiny toolbox with rulers, slates, books and a set of pictures in glass. She also packed the spectroscope, an extremely expensive instrument to measure the wavelength of light. Inji opened her mouth to say something about leaving the instrument in the lab but decided against it. If Gilaan went all the way, she would not stop her.

They rolled the cart out onto the walkway and made their way over to the far side of the cave. The physics-lab had a second location, hidden in the back. It was the only building with a light tunnel to the surface. The tunnel exit was made of glass and hermetically sealed. In the ceiling, a large silver tube emitted light from the surface into the glass cube. It was the only place in the city caves where one could see real sunlight and whether it was day or night on the surface. 

It turned out to be a real hassle to push the cart to the other physics-lab. Twice, the dirt bed almost crashed to the ground and one of the stems on the vine broke off. When they finally arrived, the lab was thankfully almost empty. Only one person was working in a corner who glanced over her shoulder once and then returned to her microscope. They could open the doors to the lightroom unnoticed.

The lightroom was enclosed all around and in the middle sat the glowing glass cube, making the whole room blindingly bright. Fabric had been hung over the glass walls to block some of the light. All around the cube, tables were set up with instruments. Inji had been here before and had noticed that one side had not changed in a while. The table was covered with tools but they had not been moved. The shape of the tools were visible on the table by the thin film of mold that covered them.

Inji cleaned a part of that table and placed the dirt bed on top of it. She pulled connectors for the water supply and sewage over and attached them, then took off the cover. Covering her eyes with one hand, she pulled the fabric to the side and the white light spilled over the table. Inji wasn't sure but she thought it looked like the leaves of the vines tried to roll itself up.

"Maybe this is too much, what do you think?" she said to Gilaan. Gilaan had her eyes shaded with one hand as she tried to set up the spectroscope with the other. Inji let the fabric fall back over the glass. The light became more bearable for their eyes but it was still brighter than what they were used to. Gilaan gave a relieved sigh now that she could use both of her hands to finish setting up the spectroscope.

"According to this, the radiation levels are quite intense. No plant from our caves could really deal with it." Gilaan wrote down some notes on her slate. "I'm pretty sure the vine would die if we just put it into the surface light."

Inji nodded, "Yes, I think so too. But what about like this, with the fabric over the glass?" she said as she knelt down to read the spectroscope, "This still gives us roughly 100 times more light than what we get from lumi-fungi."

"What if that is still too much? We know nothing about the longterm effects of surface light on plants. This is all physics stuff," Gilaan said as she waved over the assortment of stuff on the tables around the cube of light trapped in glass. 

She bent down to look at a few things. There were metal boxes with meters and glass displays on the outside, measuring whatever. Two spectrometers were permanently fixed to a table and seemingly random objects were arranged on the table with labels marking them. Inji took a magnifying glass from the toolbox and looked at one of the leaves that was closest to the light cube. She could see tiny brown spots on the formerly blue-green leaves and as she watched, they seemed to grow. 

"I think this leaf here has already gotten burned, you know, like our skin does."

"You mean it's already dying?"

"It does not look healthy," Inji said, concerned as she picked up the white fabric they had used before and put it back over the dirt bed. "Maybe we have to do this more slowly, give it time to adjust."

Gilaan nodded, "So we leave the white cloth on it for what, five days? And then we start to raise it a little every day?"

"We have to start somewhere. We have no data to work from, we are the first to test this." Inji grinned at her friend. "Isn't that great? We are the first!"

"The first to get fired from the vine growth project I'm sure," Gilaan mumbled to herself. 

Inji let her lines pulse out in calming white when she heard the door opening behind her. Guilt made her snap around a bit faster than usual, mentally preparing what she would say as an explanation for them being in this room. But she relaxed with a sigh when Heon stepped into the light.

"Heon! I'm so glad it's you!" she called out. 

Gilaan walked up to him and placed a kiss on his cheek. They had been flirting and dancing around each other for a while but recently their relationship had gotten quite serious. Inji was very happy about that and she had no problem leaving the house to them sometimes so that they could spend time alone together. Heon hugged his girlfriend and flashed a smile at Inji. 

"What are you two doing here?" he asked, "as far as I know, this is a physics lab. You icky biology students should not even be here."

Inji punched his arm lightly. "Who is icky?"

Heon walked over to their plant setup and lifted the white cloth to look underneath. 

"What in all the fates is that? If Professor Garrell sees this, she’s going to throw a fit!" He turned to Inji. "This was your idea, right? You just did it without any official assignment, right?"

"Can we hide it from Professor Garrell?" Inji asked, ignoring Heon's question."We need some time to have the plant adjust and to see if the light influences the growth rate."

"And did it ever occur to you to officially petition Professor Marlgin for a test like this?" he said, his arms flailing in exasperation. "You always do that! You just get started and hope that nobody yells at you! Now you even pulled Gilaan into it, she might lose her project because of this. And you want me to hide this from my professor too?! Do you have any idea what will happen to me if she sees this?"

Inji felt her skin blush and her lines began to pulse erratically. "If I ask, they might say no..."

Heon put his hands on her shoulders. 

"You are a scientist, you have to make your case, argue, convince. Not play secretly in a corner." 

"But what if I can't convince..." Inji whispered, her arms wrapping around her torso as if to protect herself. 

Gilaan and Heon stepped up to her and took her in their arms. They held her until her lines calmed down. Gilaan made Inji look at her. 

"Nobody is more convincing than you, love. Really, talk to Professor Marlgrin, tell him of the light, how it could affect the growth. Convince him."

"Why me? Why don't you or Heon convince him? I hate talking to that guy."

Heon snorted, "You hate talking to anybody. I mean, do I really have to say this? That stuff with the surface and the surface light is your thing. If anybody will lead the quarians on the surface, it's you, really."

Inji turned to the lightcube, mostly covered and still emitting blindingly white light. It looked so beautiful, so raw and powerful. It almost spoke to her, whispering promises of a future in the light, away from the damp darkness of the caves. 

"I don't want to be a leader of anybody, I just want to go up there."

"Sorry, love," Gilaan said, "but I don't think you have a choice." She linked her arm with Inji’s and pulled her towards the door. "Don't worry, we'll be with you the whole time."

_That helps only a little_ , Inji thought.

 

* * *

 

To Inji's endless astonishment, Professor Marlgrin was quite excited about her project. He signed off an extensive test series, putting the lightcube almost entirely under his department. Inji left the office in a daze. She wasn't sure if the walkway was swaying or her knees were giving out from under her. Gilaan was hopping around next to her like a child that had gotten a new toy, listing off the things they had to do. 

"We need to test the growth at different levels of radiation, so we should set up plantbeds at varying distances. We should experiment with different shadings, the color of the fabric could have an influence. We need to see how long the plants would need to adapt to uncovered surface light, if they can adapt to that at all and we..."

"Yes, Gilaan," Inji interrupted, "yes to all of this, make a list but please stop talking for a few minutes."

"Never!" Gilaan grinned widely and skipped ahead, calling over her shoulder, "never will I be quiet!" 

Heon chuckled quietly beside Inji, "I haven't seen her this happy in a long time. At least not out of, you know..."

"Oh my fates, are you trying to talk about sex without talking about sex?" Inji laughed. 

"Hey, just trying to be nice, really," Heon shrugged as his lines flickered a little but not like he was really annoyed. 

Inji noticed the dark area on his arm again. It still made her flinch a little, to know that he had no light there because of her but it had faded into his skin. Just like she wasn't constantly thinking about the darkness on her cheek anymore. She shook her head and picked up her pace to catch up with Gilaan. 

"What about your research, have you ever put your light collectors under surface light? You could join our project with that," she said to Heon.

"Why would I use surface lights? I have to use the lumi-light that we have available down here," he flashed irritated, "I can't just use whatever light I happen to come across, this is supposed to be something for every house. We can't just put light tunnels into every house."

"But maybe it could be like a fabrication plant for energy, loading the light collectors with it and storing the energy in those storage boxes that you use for your blue lanterns," Inji said, looking ahead to where Gilaan was disappearing into the rafters to take a shortcut to the lightcube cabin. She only noticed Heon's reticence when had not said anything for a while and found him staring at her with white eyes.

"What?" she asked, pulsing her confusion at him. 

"That is a brilliant idea!" Heon called out. "We could use the energy storage boxes like we use the water and protein containers. Have them delivered to every house and exchanged for empty ones." 

"You need a better name though, energy storage box is a bit long."

"That's going to be your job, I have to test the configuration," Heon had a new slate in his hand and began to write down notes, "the energy level will be much higher and I'm not sure how the organic cells will react. There will probably be a lot of heat dissipation. I have to watch that the cells don't burn themselves out and the connectors need to be thicker..."

Inji silently climbed up the ladders beside him, knowing that he was now lost to the world. She gently steered him towards his own laboratory, so that he could pick up the things he needed. As he disappeared into the lab, she was suddenly alone. 

Her thoughts went back to something Heon had said, that she would be the one who would lead the quarians to the surface. The idea filled her with excitement and dread. Was that something she wanted? She wanted to go up and see the stars, to explore the surface, to get to know the vastness of the planet; but she had never seen herself actually doing these things with other people, let alone lead them. Being a leader required more than just a crazy idea and a rough plan. She needed to convince many people and she would be responsible for them. She would have to keep them safe. 

 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Thanks for reading!_


	8. The Mayor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It lives! I've been very busy but I will continue to post chapters, I promise!

 

* * *

 

The next few weeks passed in a flurry of activity. Inji and Gilaan took over a whole cabin next to the lightroom and managed to also fit Heon's equipment into it. They gave him one whole side of the lightcube to place his equipment, as they needed the rest of the area for the many plant beds they had set up stacked on shelves and tables. Some of them were covered with cloth while others were exposed open to the light. They had placed spectrometers all around the shelves to measure the rate of radiation. The adjacent cabin was filled with charts and timetables of the data they had already gathered.

A few datapoints were obviously expected while others had been surprising to see. The light from the lightcube naturally showed the phases of day and night on the surface. It even had different levels of intensity during the day cycle. Some of the plants had started to react to that, rolling up their leaves at the highest radiation level and unrolling again when the light got dimmer. None of the plants survived being subjected to the most intense light for long periods of time but with a light curtain over the glass, most of the plants thrived now.

The first plant they had placed directly in the light, their pioneer, was now mostly dead. The leaves had started to turn brown and crumbled after three days. Only one small stem had survived and Inji had placed it in a pot on her desk out of some sentimental feeling she couldn't quite place. Her desk was placed in such a way that a beam of bright light hit it during the day cycle and at some point, the plant had gotten pushed into the light. To her astonishment, the leaves no longer shriveled and died but the vine turned towards the lightsource and started growing in that direction. Apparently, it had become used to the radiation levels and even needed them for growing now. Inji wasn't sure what to make of this but she propagated a branch from it and placed it directly into the light. So far, the germ bud looked healthy, unaffected by the high radiation.

The lightroom was packed. Gilaan was noting down the hourly radiation levels and measured the growth rates, while Inji was checking every branch and every leaf for irregularities. Heon was setting up new collector cells after the first batch had more or less exploded in the first trial run under full light exposure. It had taken him two weeks to make new cells. The new cells were very dark, almost black and the connecting wires were almost as thick as a finger. He had also made new power-boxes, as Inji had named them, hoping that they would hold the stronger current. They stood on the floor, in a tray to trap any leaking fluids because not only had the collector cells exploded on the first try, the old power-boxes also had started leaking.

The day cycle was coming up, the light inside of the lightcube was turning orange. Inji watched the plants, sometimes she had the feeling that she could see them turning towards the light. The Lorey-vine, that she was checking right now, had developed patterns on its leaves and all the leaves were turned towards the lightcube. It kept growing towards the light, stretching its stems. She almost felt sorry for the plant. She was tempted to move it closer to the lightcube because it looked like it really wanted to hold its leaves into the light. She didn't of course, that would have corrupted the data they were gathering here.

She was about to turn to the next plant, when she noticed that her fingers were sticky. She checked the Lorey-vine again and noticed that it had developed a flower umbel. Hundreds of little white flowers were beginning to bloom, promising many seeds to reap from it. Inji checked her notes, going over the parchments for this plant bed. The plant had been growing from an early bud to this size for a little more than two weeks. It was way too young to even develop flowers yet.

"Gilaan?"

She looked over to her friend and colleague who was apparently busy with giggling with her boyfriend as he set up the collectors.

"Gilaan!" Inji shouted and grinned at the flash of shock her lines made. "Did you move this bed here?"

Gilaan came over, reigning her lights under control after a sudden flash of anger.

"What are you talking about? The placement and exposure rates are defined, I don't just move things around for fun. I'm not an idiot!" She picked up the parchment and pointed to the row with the number that corresponded to the number on the dirt bed. "This bed has been here for two weeks. Just like the others in its exposure range, it has shown an improved growth rate of 30% above the normal rate. That is astonishing but we knew that already. So why are you asking?"

"It has flower umbels," Inji said flatly.

"That's impossible, it's too young."

Heon came over and watched over her shoulder.

"It has what?"

Inji lifted the leaves and showed them the flower umbel.

"This right here, the stem with the white flowers, is called a flower umble," she explained.

Being this close, they could smell its heady, sweet scent. Gilaan stared at it; her eyes glowing in blueish white. She stretched out one finger and dipped it against one of the white flowers as if she expected it to shatter.

"By the fates!" she gasped.

Inji started a rough graph on a slate.

"If it continues at this speed, we can harvest seeds in another week." She held her breath to calm down. "That would mean...," she checked her graph again, "we have an accelerated growth rate by 300%. We could harvest in a third of the normal time."

"The plants grow faster?" Heon asked.

"Faster?" Inji laughed hysterically, "this is unbelievable! We could harvest the seeds ten times during the year this way!"

She jumped up and ran over to the other plant beds. Gilaan followed her and they almost tackled each other to search for more flower umbels. They found more of them, blooming and scenting the air. The more they looked, the more they found and most of them had just started to grow. Gilaan took Inji's hands and spun her around as much as it was possible in the cramped room. Heon spread his arms protectively in front of his setup to stop them from knocking it over.

"Inji! This is huge! Can you imagine how fast we could produce protein with this method? No more protein shortages!" Gilaan sang out and threw her dark braids around. Heon watched her like she was natural wonder. Inji laughed along but in her head she was already thinking about how large the sun area would have to be in order to get a significant harvest from the vines and how many people she would have to talk to for that.

Gilaan finally let her go and turned to Heon to kiss him. Inji sat down and started rough calculations on her slate. She was so immersed in it that she didn't notice other people had entered the lightroom nor that Gilaan and Heon had gotten very quiet. She turned around in her chair and spoke her thoughts, her eyes staring at the calculations on her slate.

"We need a suncave. This room is too small for farming," she said as she underlined her numbers. "We need a whole cave and maybe two or three light-tunnels. The light-tunnels have to be sealed like ours here or we have to seal the whole cave. But then we would have to sterilize the seeds, so sealing the light-tunnels would be better. So, all in all, we need a suncave, a big one."

An unfamiliar, slightly amused voice suddenly spoke up, "I think I may have something like that."

Inji jumped and stood up to see who had spoken. Without her noticing, Professor Marlgrin and a man who looked familiar but she couldn't quite place, had entered the lightroom. The man was young, not much older than herself, she guessed and she thought he looked gorgeous. He did not fulfill all the current fashion ideals though. His skin was dark-blue instead of the ideal light blue and his braids were more brown than black. But she loved the angular cut of his face, the bold lines that grew from his neck to his cheekbones and his bright eyes seemed to look into hers like a force of nature. He chuckled a little, his voice deep and rich, before she realized that she was stupidly staring at him. She turned away, hiding her embarrassment by greeting the professor.

"Professor Marlgrin, you have come at the right time. Gilaan'Terel and I have something to show you."

She gestured him over to her, intentionally ignoring the other person who still had that amused smile on his face. She sat down to show the flower umbels to the professor and explained her rough calculations. Professor Marlgrin looked genuinely excited and he waved the other man over.

"May I introduce the mayor of Mekken, Veelen'Sar Elger."

Everybody nodded respectively as the professor introduced them. Inji was astonished. She knew that the mayor of Mekken was young but she never knew that he was this young. The professor turned to Gilaan to have her explain the different light areas to him.

Inji sat down and checked the plant again for any sign of sunburn or root rot. But she was keenly aware that the mayor had stepped up behind her and looked at the plant over her shoulder. She could feel his presence; the light of his lines reflecting off the leaves and he even smelled nice. Inji felt her face heat up and she fought for control of her lights to not betray how nervous he made her.

"May I see the flower?" he asked.

"Yes of course." Inji jumped up and to the side as if her chair was filled with steam.

He had that amused smile on his face again and she wanted to slap herself for acting so stupid. Her hand went to her cheek, covering the dark scarred patch where the sun had burned her. The room was bright so the dark patch of skin without light on her face did not stand out as much but she felt as if it made her ugly.

"Why is this flower so significant?" he asked.

His voice had a rough edge to it, rasping a bit. Inji had to suppress a shudder. Deep, rough voices had always been a turn on for her. She even once started a romance with someone, just because she had liked his voice. As it turned out, even the nicest voice does not help when the person using it is rather stupid. She had ended that one quickly. She cleared her throat and picked out a parchment from the archive shelf to show it to him.

"This plant is a Lorey-vine. We harvest the seeds to produce the protein paste. If it grows under lumi-fungi, it needs about 3 months to grow and produce flowers. Then it takes another month until the seeds can be harvested. We can harvest about two or three times a year in the farming caves."

She leaned over and lifted the leaves to show him the flower umbel. She was very much in his space now but he did not move away. His amused smile was beginning to annoy her.

"As you can see," she continued, “this is a full umbel but the plant is only two weeks old. It has grown extremely fast under the surface light."

She did not move, daring him to do so instead. He shifted a bit, giving her more space. His lights flickered a little, she could see it on his hands and on the part of his neck that was not covered by thick green fabric. As a politician, he took care of covering his lines so that he did not involuntarily gave his true emotions away. But he had pushed up his sleeves so that his hands and wrists were not covered. Inji wondered if he had done that on purpose, if he had wanted her to see them. His lights calmed down, pulsing slowly in the same rhythm as her own.

He cleared his throat, "So you think you could farm with these vines in a, what did you call it? A suncave?"

"Yes," Inji almost didn't recognize her own voice, it sounded as rough as his, "a suncave. It has to have light-tunnels to the surface, like this one."

She pointed to the lightcube in the middle of the room. The cube was so bright that it hurt to look at it, even though most of the sides were covered with curtains. Soon the peak of light and radiation would be reached, making it impossible to work right next to it.

"We would make lightcubes like this one, so we don't get any contamination from the surface." Inji pulled over another chair and sat down next to Veelen'Sar. She sketched out some rough plans on a slate. "We would need a cave that is close to the surface and maybe already has some light coming in. That way we could start with the lightcubes and acclimatize the first plants."

Veelen'Sar looked at her with his bright eyes and a mischievous smile played on his lips.

"I may have just what you need."

"A suncave? But Mekken does not have suncaves," Inji said.

"We had a cave-in," Veelen mumbled so quietly that Inji almost didn't hear him.

"A cave-in in Mekken? I never heard about that!"

Actually, she would have heard about that. There had not been a cave-in in almost twenty years in the cities. Veelen dipped his head to the side and she could see the lights flash on his hands in embarrassment.

"We have kept it secret for now, until we know what caused it. It was a new cave, north of the main caves." He turned to look at her. "We sealed it because surface light breaks through in three places and the inspectors panicked. Contamination, so close to the main cave, you can imagine."

Inji nodded, she could indeed imagine. Stories about people getting sick or even dying from contamination with surface particles never got old. They got passed around from an early age, instilling a sense of danger in everyone. Inji always kept quiet when those stories came up. She and her friends had been on the surface and they still lived. They had been careful but they had not hermetically sealed the masks. The experience had made her decide that those stories were exaggerations.

"And we could use that cave?" she asked, already mentally cataloging how they would construct the lightcubes, the dirt beds and install water connectors. "I would have to see it, as soon as possible, so that I can see the size and what kind of construction we need to do." She began scribbling down notes. "We also need to sterilize the cave as soon as we sealed off the lightcubes..."

"If you know of a way to avoid contamination, I could show it to you tonight," Veelen said.

"Oh, that won't be a problem," Inji said and almost jumped up to clap her hands in excitement. A suncave! She would get a whole suncave! "I have masks and overcoats we can wear to protect us."

"So can I pick you up here tonight?"

Inji looked over at the lightcube getting brighter by the minute.

"Actually, if we wait too long, we won't see any surface light."

Veelen shook his head, "No, that doesn't make any sense. You have to see how much light you'll have in the cave."

He pulled the sleeves back over his hands and Inji felt slightly disappointed that she could not see his lines anymore. He turned to her and captured her gaze with his bright eyes.

"I have two more appointments but after that, I'm free. Can I pick you up here in an hour? Can you have your equipment ready by then?"

This time, Inji actually jumped up with excitement.

"Of course! I'll have everything ready then." She knew her lines were pulsing in childish happiness but she didn't care. "A suncave!" she whispered to herself.

She skidded over to the closet and began to lay out the things they would need. Veelen got up and excused himself to the Professor, Heon and Gilaan. On his way out he stopped beside Inji and nodded at her.

"I'll be back in an hour then."

Inji checked the spectrometers and replied without looking up, "Yes, I'll be ready."

As soon as he left, Gilaan appeared at her side and took her hands off the spectrometer. She stared at her friend with her purple glowing eyes, "Did you just make a date with the mayor of Mekken?"

"What? No!" Inji looked at her confused, as much as she found Veelen fascinating, this meeting was just for pragmatic reasons. Nothing romantic about it. "I have to see this suncave! It might be just the right setting to do large scale farming." She checked two sets of overcoats and pants for holes and mumbled to herself, "It's not a date."

Gilaan laughed so loud, that Professor Marglin looked up from the parchments he was reading. With a sigh, he turned back to the data, obviously checking if they had made any mistakes. While he had completely entrusted this project to them, it was still his laboratory and he liked to stay informed.

Gilaan snickered and helped her put the coats, instruments and a copious amount of wipes in a bag and whispered to her, "I saw you looking at each other. Heon should have put one of his collectors between you two. He would have charged his box in no time." Inji punched her on the arm but Gilaan only giggled in response. "I have never seen you act so smitten by someone. You looked like you wanted to lick off his lines."

"Shut up, you!" Inji growled at her.

It annoyed her mostly because she knew it was true. She felt dizzy and she knew without looking that her lines were flickering in very telling patterns. Inji was not a complete stranger to romance, there had even been a kind of boyfriend in the early days of college. If you could call going out a few times and working on projects together a romance. But it had never felt like this, like her lights were twisting themselves around her and lifting her up. She gave her friend an angry flash and returned to wrapping the spectrometers in cloth.

"Better focus on the suncave, this could be really something. Especially for Mekken, they had a protein shortage a little while ago..."

"Where did this suncave come from? I never heard of a suncave near Mekken," Gilaan asked, keeping her voice low enough so that only Inji could hear her.

"He said they had a cave-in." Inji kept her voice equally low.

"A cave-in? In Mekken?" Gilaan blinked in shock. "I never heard of a cave-in, especially not in Mekken. That would be... oh dear!"

"They are keeping it a secret, he told me," Inji said. "Probably afraid of a panic or something."

"Oh yes, there would definitely be a panic. Almost a million people live in Mekken, it has to be stable!" Gilaan said. "There hasn't been a cave-in for years. Now this and the steam accident in the fabric plant."

"What steam accident?"

"Fates have mercy, do you ever even listen to the waveat?" Gilaan sighed in frustration. "They had an uncontrolled outbreak of raw steam near a fabric plant. The rock just exploded and then boiling water and steam shot out of the hole. More than twenty people got burned and the pipes to the plant ruptured. That plant has been shut down for two weeks now."

Inji froze, she remembered a conversation she had had with another senior student a few weeks back. She was an expert in geology and told her of the tremors they had been reading on their seismographs. Tremors under the mountains, deeper than even the deepest cave. Documentation of the geological stability of the caves was almost non existent, as far as quarians could remember, the mountains had always been stable. There was a reason why geology was considered the most boring subject anyone could take in college. But the mountains seemed to wake up.

"Was there any warning before, tremors or something?"

"How would I know?" Gilaan said with frustration. "I didn't know about the cave-in and if it's not on the waveat, I will never know about anything. I'm spending all my time in this lab or with you two and you are obviously not a reliable source of information!"

She flashed angrily for a few seconds but as always, bad moods did not last long with her. She visibly shook it off and turned to Inji with a smile.

"Back to the subject. Veelen'Sar Elger looked like he was very much looking forward to meeting you."

"He is a politician,” Inji snorted at her, “you can't trust what he is projecting. He has his lines covered for a reason."

Gilaan shook her head, "It is almost sad how little you know, love." She raised herself up on the tip of her three toes and planted a kiss on Inji's cheek. "But still, I'm sure you will be fine. Just be yourself."

Inji gave her an angry flash. "That is the stupidest advice I have ever heard. How can I be anything other than myself? And it doesn't matter anyway, this is not a date. Now help me pack up two seedlings in a container and something that can drip water on it for a while."

"Why put seedlings in if the cave is not sterilized yet?"

"You know that I don't really believe that contamination is all that dangerous." If it were, their adventure a few years ago would have had some nasty consequences. "And we need to see if the cave is suitable for growing at all. There could be other factors: poisoned gas, new radiation..."

Gilaan laughed, "It's always nice to listen to your charming outlook on life."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to illusionsfire76 for editing, even though she's insanely busy.


	9. Touch

* * *

Over two hours later, Inji sat next to two bags with equipment and waited. Waiting always made her anxious but now it felt even worse. She really wanted to see the suncave, see how the light filled a large cave. At least that's what she told herself. She didn't want to admit to herself that she waited so anxiously for _him_. He wasn't late for a date, he was just a bit late for a business meeting. 

It was not a date.

It sure felt like it though.

The pitiful smiles from Gilaan and Heon did not help either. Inji flashed her lights angrily at them and returned to her calculations. She wanted to guess at the productivity rate in the suncave but she really needed numbers for that. So instead she began to sketch out the different development stages of the Lorey-vine. Broad, harsh strokes scratched against the slate until the tip broke off. Inji stared at it in surprise, she had not broken a pen in years.

"I'm very sorry to be late." The deep, raspy voice of Veelen shook her out of her thoughts. The anger that had slowly been building up inside of her threatened to break out in a harsh remark but she stopped herself. She had no right to demand his time like that. 

"Well, let's not dawdle any longer then," she said, keeping her voice and her lights calm and professional. She picked one bag up and noticed with delight that he hurried to pick up the other one. He wore a short robe that left his neck and arms uncovered and she felt a surge of happiness that he let her see his lines. 

She scolded herself for these silly thoughts, he probably just wanted to get out of his business robe. It had nothing to do with her. But still, she pulsed her lines friendly at him and was happy to see him answer in the same way. 

They walk through Mekken was long and tedious. The young mayor got recognized a lot on the way and had to talk to many people. He seemed genuinely nice and happy to talk. He had kind words and encouragements for everyone and managed to deflect hostile complaints in an effective and still friendly manner. It was quite fascinating to watch for Inji, who always found dealing with other people exhausting. 

Finally, they reached the bridges that connected the city cave to the farming area. Here the walkways were blissfully empty, making the trek much easier. Inji let Veelen walk ahead, he knew the way and it gave her the opportunity to watch him without getting caught staring at him. She found him really attractive and had no idea why. 

Objectively, he was quite ordinary. He was slim, of average height, his lower legs had a nice but normal curve to them, and his fingers were of average length. But somehow his dark skin, his bold lines and the way he held her gaze whenever she looked in his bright eyes, made her shiver. The view from the back that she had right now was not helping her calm down either. 

She pulled on her braids to distract herself, she needed to concentrate on the task ahead, not lust after the young mayor of the biggest city-cave inside Gelldre Kah. 

He stopped at a roped off intersection and Inji almost ran into him, to her utter embarrassment. She had been so distracted watching his ass. What an idiot she was. 

"This way," he said quietly, a tiny smile playing on his lips, "watch your step, there may still be rocks and pebbles on the walkway."

"Over here? Are we there already?" She had expected to smell surface air or see sunlight if they were close to the suncave. 

Veelen shook his head. "No, we still have to go a little further. But the cave-in jolted this whole area, we had rock-falls everywhere around here. It actually showed..." he suddenly stopped, as if he had said more than he had intended to.

"It showed what?" Inji had to ask, she could not let it go.

"I really should not be talking about this with you...," he hesitated and his lines flickered uncertanty until he seemed to reach a decision. "A geologist looked at this area and said that the rock in this part of the mountain is much more brittle than they had expected."

Inji waited for him to continue but he stayed silent. She thought the information over for a while. "So that means that this area could be unstable? There could be more cave-ins?"

This time she really ran into him as he froze mid step. "I have not considered that." He looked at her. "I cannot guarantee your safety." 

Inji grinned at him. "I hope you are not expecting me to run away now. I came here to see a suncave and I'm not leaving before I saw it."

He held her gaze for a few seconds, tilting his head as if he was sizing her up. She didn't flinch and when he smiled at her she knew she had won. "Very well." 

They kept walking in silence, watching where they put their feet. The bags were beginning to strain on their shoulders. Around them, the walls looked rough and came in close to them. This area was clearly not finished yet. At some parts, they even had to duck their heads. 

Just as Inji began to wonder is they had lost their way, Veelen stopped and put down his bag. They faced a rough wall, only on a second look did she see that it was actually covered with a piece of tarp, nailed to the rockface, just like Gilaan had done back when they had to close the exit they had used for their trip to the surface. Veelen turned to her and pulsed his lights insecurely. Inji had to will her eyes away from the beautiful bold lines on his neck.

"This is the cave," the mayor said. "We sealed it after the cave-in. The advisers told me that we have to be careful when we open it again."

"I know what to do," Inji said, even though she would not say how she knew it so well. She took out the overcoats and pants and handed one set to Veelen. After they had put them on, Inji removed the nails on one corner of the fabric and carefully lifted it up. Sunlight poured out of the gap and Inji caught a short whiff of peculiar smelling air. It reminded her to put on the mask but she hesitated. She loved smelling this air. 

But she had to keep the mayor safe too and who knew how he would react to the surface air. She handed him the mask and also the dark glass for the eyes. He put the mask on without problems but needed some help putting on the glass. She helped him and then fixed her own. He looked at her curiously, maybe he wondered how she knew so well how to put all of this on. 

Before he could ask embarrassing questions, she pulled the fabric away and slipped through. The light bit into her eyes and she hurried to pull the glass over them. Her eyes adjusted and she managed to grasp the size of the cave. It was bigger than she had anticipated, long and narrow. Surface light poured in from three openings between the stalactites on the ceiling but it did not fill the whole of the room.

Inji carefully climbed over the rubble on the floor towards one of the openings. The rubble on the floor helped her climb up towards the crack in the ceiling and she peered in as far as she could.

"We might need to do some work on this opening, insert a light tube." A light tube was basically a metal tube with the inside polished to be reflective. The light cube in the laboratory was equipped like that, more or less by accident but it made the light cube a lot brighter.

She made her way over to the second opening, climbing and crawling over the rubble. The ground was still untouched, not levelled yet, small stalagmites rising from it. It had a steep incline and no steps to guide the feet. The rubble that had fallen from the stalactites turned the rough surface into a slide of rolling rocks under her feet. She had to go on her hands and knees to steady herself. 

The second opening was huge and she could actually see a bit of the sky if she stretched her neck. But she had to turn away after a second, even through the dark glass the blazing sky hurt her eyes. Veelen crawled up beside her, looking a bit out of his element but managed to get over without hurting himself. Inji kept her grin to herself and was glad that her lines were covered so that her amusement wasn't obvious. 

She took his arm and pulled him over to her. "Look! The sky!"

He sat down beside her and shielded the darkglass with a hand. "The light is so bright, I can't see."

"I know, just look quickly. Just a little." She held her hand over his head to give him some shade. "We have to go back here when it is dark, so that you can see the stars. You can not imagine how amazing the sky looks at night." She had to look away from the light, green spots dancing in her vision. She looked at Veelen and realized that he had not looked at the sky at all but at her. She was glad that he couldn't see her lights pulsing in excitement and embarrassment at the same time. 

"I would like that," Veelen said. 

"Like what?" 

"See the sky at night with you." His face was mostly hidden behind the breathing mask but she could see that he was smiling. It still felt ridiculous that the mayor of Mekken could be interested in her but she was pretty sure she interpreted his signs correctly. 

Inji was no expert in navigating the mazes of romance but she saw no point in hemming and hawing either. "So... that would be a date? To watch the night sky with me?" 

Veelen chuckled, his laugh muffled from the mask. "I had actually hoped that this would be a kind of date. Disguised as a business meeting so that I could easily back out if... necessary." 

Inji felt her face grow hot. So he really was interested in her. How weird. "It's not necessary, not from my side at least," she said, not hiding the big smile on her face. She knew that he could see it under her breathing mask. "My friend, Gilaan, said it was a date but I didn't believe her. Oh, she is not going to let go of that for days, that she was right!" She wanted to put her face in her hands but knocked against the glass instead. It hurt enough to make her cry out. Veelen was beside her in a second, his hand hovering over the glass, unsure of what to do.

"It's okay," Inji said, "so very typical of me to hurt myself on something stupid like that." She took his hand that kept hovering over her eyes to push it away but when her hand touched his, it felt like a charge got exchanged between them, even through the gloves. He gripped her hand, clearly unwilling to let go. 

They sat like that, a bit awkward, both holding the other ones hand by the wrist. Finally Inji got up and pulled him up with her. Their glasses bumped together on the way up and Inji fell into helpless giggles as they both yelled out "Ouch!"

"This is going so well," Veelen said with a sigh. "I think I would rather pretend that this was not a date, it might screw with my expectations for future dates." 

Inji couldn't suppress the giggles. She was still holding his hand and she liked it. His eyes were faint lights behind the dark glass but it still felt like he looked directly into her soul. She took a small step closer to him but she lost her balance. Pebbles rolled under her feet, rocks that had been solid before, tilted under the weight of her feet. She grabbed Veelen's other arm for balance but realized that he struggled just like her. 

The ground was moving. Dust and pebbles fell from the ceiling and tremors made the rocks they were standing on slide down the incline. They crashed on their sides, still desperately holding on to each other. It wasn't quite clear who tried to protect whom. They crashed into a larger bolder, Inji's glass-frame smashed against it and broke apart. The glass cracked and shattered. Luckily she had squeezed her eyes shut. With a shake of her head she cleared the remains of the frame and the shards away but now the light around her was blinding.

As sudden as it had started, everything was quiet again. Inji pressed her hand over her eyelids, even closed her eyes burned from the intensity if the light. "Did the ceiling come down?"

She only noticed now that Veelen held her in his arms and his voice came from around her shoulder. "Only small rocks, pebbles, nothing big came down. It wasn't much of a tremor, I think it felt worse than it was because we stood on that incline." He still held her as if he wanted to shield her.

Inji shook him off and moved to stand up, her eyes still closed. She obviously could not make it out of the cave on her own without opening her eyes so she felt for Veelen's hand until he placed it in hers. 

"You have to guide me out of here," she said, "I have to come back later with new darkglass." 

Veelen made her link her arm with his and began leading her forward, announcing bigger rocks she had to step over or around along the way. His voice was calm and soothing and Inji wondered if he really was calm or if his lines were pulsing in panic like hers. The trek to the exit was painfully slow, with Inji stumbling and slipping and Veelen trying to hold her upright on the uneven ground.

"There, we are at the cloth," he said, "duck your head down to crawl through." 

Inji hesitated, they should have taken off the overcoats first but she couldn't stay in the blazing light any longer. She got on her knees and crawled through the gap, slowly unclenching her eyelids on the other side. Her eyes were tingling and green spots danced in her vision. Veelen came through the gap and she helped him to find a position to sit and take off the dark glass. Here in the comfortable darkness of the cave, he was the blind one while she could see. 

They took a look around. The walkway looked a bit more dusty but the ceiling seemed to have stayed intact. Inji picked up a few pebbles and let them clack against each other in her hands. She would have to ask her geologist friend how common it was for tremors to follow so close to each other. Maybe she knew of a way to measure the stability, to foresee tremors. Maybe she would know if this was the last one or if there would be more. 

She realized that she had sat in silence, deep in thought for several minutes when Veelen cleared his throat. "I don't want to intrude on your thoughts," he said, "but I wonder if we could get out of these suits now." 

"Yes, I'm sorry, we..." she took off the gloves to help him with his overcoat, "we should do this very carefully, don't let dust fly off them. While we're at it, we should designate this area as the transition place, later we can block off this part with fabric so that any particles from the suncave stay here."

Veelen looked worried. "Are we in danger from the particles?"

Inji sighed. "Personally, I think the dangers of surface particles are exaggerated but you never know. You should watch for allergic reactions for the next few days."

"Aren't we contaminating the city-caves?" Of course, the mayor of the biggest city-cave would worry about that. 

"That's why I brought wipes with us. We will clean ourselves with them." She helped him out of the overcoat and pants and carefully folded them up and placed them next to hers on the floor. His sleeveless robe was wrapped tight around his midriff by a belt and fell short over his pants. Inji wore a similar robe in darker colors and wondered if it looked as good on her as on him. 

She made him sit down and took a wipe and began wiping his braids and face, working from top to bottom to wipe down all particles. She had done that before with Heon and Gilaan but it felt distinctly different now. 

As she wiped his braids, carefully separating them and wiping between them, Veelen closed his eyes. His bold lines were shining in vivid purple and a soft hum came from his throat. Inji felt herself blush and her lines showed the same purple as his. A shudder went down her spine. Wiping down his neck and over his back felt more intimate than anything she had ever done.

She continued wiping, over his shoulders, down his arms. She used a new wipe on the robe on his chest and over his stomach. To wipe down his legs, she made him stand up. She hesitated shortly when she came to wipe the dust off his clothed ass and groin and looked up to him. His eyes were still closed, his face relaxed. Inji returned to the task with determination, it needed to be done and she would do it. He did not move as she wiped over his back down to the back of his knees but she noticed an intake of breath when she did the same in front. 

When she was finished, she stepped away and handed him a pack of wipes. He nodded and went to work. His face was full of concentration as he worked through her braids and she closed her eyes just like he had done. His touch was soft on her braids, moving them from one side over to the other. The he moved over her ears to her face, following the greaves and lines. She became aware that he wiped over her dark spot and her eyes flew open. She searched for disgust in his eyes but he just looked warmly at her and pulsed his lights calmingly. 

With a sigh, she closed her eyes again, letting him work over her face. She flinched when he touched a cut from the shattered glass but it was not deep. The shards had not hit her skin hard enough to penetrate the tough epidermis. He kept humming while he softly wiped over her skin and clothes. When he wiped her neck, she almost shivered. Her lines were probably shining twice as bright as they normally would. He made her stand up to wipe down her front and back. It felt like he got even slower in his movements now, wiping over her stomach and her groin. This time she really shivered and she dug her nails in her palm to stop herself from moaning. 

Finally he came down to her calfs, kneeling down beside them. He used both hands to wrap around her legs, pressing down firm. It looked like he had a thing for legs, giving the curve of her calfs special attention. 

When he stopped and stood up, a sigh escaped Inji. She opened her eyes to see him stand right in front of her, his eyes alight with bright purple. They looked at each other, holding their breath, until the sound of approaching footsteps pulled them out of their reverie. 

A messenger boy came running towards them, easily jumping over the rubble on the walkway. He skidded to a halt in front of them, producing a rolled up parchment and a pen from his pockets. "Mayor!" he called out and handed him the parchment. "Your assistant is worried about you. Please give him a message about your well being." He held out the pen and waited for Veelen to scribble down a few words, slightly bouncing the whole time. When he got the parchment and pen back, he turned around to run away but got stopped by the mayor calling him.

"Was there any damage in Mekken from the tremor?" he asked. 

The boy reluctantly stopped and waved a hand vaguely towards Mekken. "Some rubble fell down at the west but nothing big. There was some damage in Hardet's cave but I don't know what." 

Inji snapped around. "The Knowledge Cave got damaged? Did something happen to the laboratories?" 

"I don't know Ma'am," the boy was fidgeting, like he couldn't wait to get running again, "they're not saying stuff on the waveat." 

Inji gave him a wave and the boy sped away, skidding and leaping like gravity was optional for him.

"It seems like we have to go back," Veelen said with a sigh. He bent down to pick up the overcoats but Inji stopped him. 

"Let's leave those here. We would just spread the particles everywhere and we can use them again next time." She placed a rock on each folded pile and looked into the bags. "I didn't get to set up the spectrometers or the seedlings." 

Veelen put a hand on her shoulder. "Next time. Leave them here. Would you think the cave is bright enough for surface light farming?"

"Yes, I'm sure," Inji said, "I mean, I would need precise numbers, hence the spectrometers but if I would guess..."

"I trust your guess," Veelen said and smiled at her. "I have a construction crew on standby for this project, they just need the dark glass and overcoats." He ushered her forward with his hand on her back and walked her back over the walkway. "I'm putting this project under your supervision, I want you to make this a hyper efficient protein farm for Mekken." 

"Only for Mekken?"

"Mekken will fund this project and we will of course share any excess harvest but..." he looked at her, probably to see her reaction, "I know it sounds selfish to built this for Mekken only but you have to understand, we are already rationing the protein-base. We have to transport protein from the other cities because the farms do not produce enough for us. And it's not like the others have much to spare. If Mekken is self sufficient, the other cities can stop rationing too." 

Inji flashed in panic. "And you want me to head this project? I have no experience in running such a large scale operation."

Veelen crossed his arms behind his back. "My assistant will take on most of the organization, she will talk to the architects and builders. But they don't know what needs to be done. You know about the surface light and about the plants. And I have a feeling you know more than you let on." He gave her a sheepish grin. "You know about the surface, more than you are willing to tell me." He held up a hand to stop her from protesting. "I will not pry, you don't have to tell me anything."

She looked at his face, taking his expressions in like she would see him for the first time. He seemed so sincere and serious, an experienced politician. But there was a boyish charm to his smile that showed how young he truly was. Inji wanted to talk to his boyish smile and tell him all her secrets but that other part of him held her back.

"Maybe I will one day," she said, smiling at him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Yes, it's alive! I'm uploading the chapters I have already written and will finish the story. I would like to thank all my remaining readers. Thank you for being here._


	10. Crash

(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)

_ Diary of Inji'Zora Jerall, 21.4 Changes _

_Becoming a member of the emergency response team may have been the worst or the best idea I have ever had. On one hand, I see more surface light and suncaves than anybody else, on the other hand I could really use a full down-cycle of sleep once in a while. We are getting more and more tremors and cave-ins. I asked the geology department, the architects and the techs to come together for a conference later this week on the stability of the caves. Hopefully that will bring us some new perceptions._

(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)

The blaring of the alarm horns woke Inji up after too few hours of sleep. She rolled out of her bed with a yawn and sat on the floor to put on her clothes. She had started to wear a tight undersuit for sleeping and only needed to pull over a sturdy overcoat to be ready for First Response. Five minutes later she was out on the walkway and ran towards the main base in this part of Mekken.

They cabin she shared with Gilaan and Heon was near the sunfarms in a new part of Mekken. It also happened to be close to Veelen's cabin. A fact that had nothing to do with why she liked the area. At least that was what she was telling herself. 

She was the first at the base, she was a bit proud of that. The alarm-waveat was buzzing with automatic messages from the seismographs, needles scratching over parchments. She saw that it was the northern part of the cave again, another tremor. The sound of another seismograph needle starting to scratch made her wince. It had only dithered when she had entered but now it was fully oscillating from one side to the other. The alarm-waveat beeped even more, indicating a second tremor at the north. 

Two people stormed into the room, emergency response helpers like her. She knew them both well, one was a geologist, the other was the head constructor of the first suncave that Inji had installed. His name was Lergten'Ibani and the way he usually acted, he had constructed and installed Suncave Star all on his own, carrying the scaffolding himself on his massive shoulders. But he was always respectful to Inji and the other members of her suncave team, so she didn't mind his boasting. 

The geologist, Binali'Gikki, slid on a chair next to Inji. She was the complete opposite of the burly constructor, small and fragile but with a grim determination in everything she did. "Where is it?"

"North, a second one has just begun." 

"The crack we saw two days ago?"

"Possibly." Inji jumped up and grabbed her gear, the other two did the same. They shouldered their bags and ran towards the northern part of Mekken. 

The walkways were full of people running the other way, away from the tremors. Emergency helpers let them over trembling walkways, making them walk fast one after the other to prevent accidents. During one of the first tremors, people had panicked and two men had fallen off the walkways and had to be rescued from the nets. One had died later from his wounds of the impact. The emergency response helpers had been established to prevent such accidents in the future.

The training for the emergency response helpers was still in development but Inji was quite impressed how well they worked. Small children were carried, bigger children walked behind adults, everybody formed a neat row. They left a gap in the middle of the walkway so that other emergency response teams could get through. People looked worried, the whole row flickering and flaring in many shades of blue and purple but nobody panicked out here. 

That changed as they got closer to the disaster area. It began with small pebbles littering the walkway and soon became a bed of rocks to climb over. People were running around disoriented, some of them bleeding from head wounds. There were cries for help and sobs; parents and children calling for each other. A big chunk of the walkway to the cabins was missing and some helpers were placing iron beams and hardened fabric over the gap. 

A young girl stood beside the gap, clutching a stuffed toy to her chest. She was completely silent, not even her lights were twinkling, she was almost invisible. One of the workers noticed her and waved down a helper to have her brought to safety. The helper lifted her on her arm and carried her past Inji. The girl still had no lights but she whispered "Father was there..." when they passed Inji. She wanted to ask what the girl meant but a scream from someone with his leg buried under a beam distracted her.

Inji kept running after Binali and Lergten until she bumped into a woman who just stood in the middle of the walkway, pressing a bleeding hand to her chest. One of her two fingers was missing and her blood ran down her dress and dripped to the floor. A little child was pulling on her dress, trying to get her to move. But she just stood there, blood dripping down and her lights slowly dimming. Inji wrapped a bandage around her hand and tried to get the woman to react to her but she was not successful. She finally managed to get her to turn around and walk with her to a small medic station.

The nurse took the woman and Inji ran back to the main disaster area. Lergten was climbing over a pile of rubble that had completely flattened a house and made the buildings next to it tilt dangerously. He shined a blue light from a portable light-tube towards the stalactites above the rubble. Inji felt a tingle of pride at seeing that, Heon had developed these light-tubes with his new small energy cells. 

She climbed up besides Lergten and followed the beam of blue light with her eyes. A big rock or many had broken rafters and scaffolding on the way down, a steampipe was severed and billowed out white steam. What they could see of the ceiling looked solid, it had not been a full cave-in but a large part of the stalactites had just dropped down. It wasn't the only place where that had happened, all around them they could see fresh edges where rock had broken out of the solid cave walls. 

Below the top level of cabins where they were now, the destruction was not quite so bad. Inji had read in the news pamphlets that people had begun to move out of the housing on the top levels and that cabins at the low level, formerly neglected because of the bad infrastructure around them, were now in high demand. Inji didn't blame them. She could see that some houses on the lower levels had been hit with rocks and debris but the damage was negligible compared to the disaster here on the top level. 

People were still screaming, calling for friends or family members. But the emergency response helpers successfully evacuated the area, leaving Inji, Binali and Lergten alone to access the damage. 

The three of them were supposed to catalogue the damage, order repairs and mark on the map where new support beams would have to be installed. Inji was not quite sure how they had become the leading team for this task, only Binali, the geologist, actually knew something about rocks and tremors. Lergten knew more about construction and the stability of iron rafters and scaffolding than Inji would ever manage to forget, so he was quite useful. Inji was considered the leading expert in dealing with surface contamination, a fact that greatly amused her. Somehow, they had become the first team everybody called when something happened in the caves.

Lergten shined the blue light to a crack in the ceiling. His voice boomed over the scaffolding. "I think this one is new, it might have started here." 

Inji set up the picturegraph and waited for the exposure time to pass. They would be able to compare this crack to others they had in their library, so that they could make predictions about the stability of this area. She reseated the picturegraph three times, that way she had a good chance of getting at least one useful picture. 

Lergten was already climbing further out and down, looking at the scaffolding underneath the destroyed cabin. Inji followed him, consciously ignoring the signs of a lived in house now crashed under the weight of a giant boulder. A colorful curtain was peeking out on the side and in between the rubble one chair stood out, intact, only a few pebbles on the seating. All other furniture had been reduced to splinters of hardened Kathurka fibers and bend metal. Inji didn't know if anybody had died inside of this house and she didn't want to think about it.

She took another three pictures of the scaffolding, having Lergten shine the blue light on it to get a decent illumination. He didn't say anything but he looked worried when he wrote in his notebook. Binali called them over, she had ventured out to the far end of the cave and was almost outside of the disaster area. 

"Look at this," she pointed towards a small tunnel in the cracked wall, "this section is new. We audiographed this whole area only a few weeks ago, we had no indication of cavities behind these walls."

"What does that mean?" Inji asked.

"It means that either our audiographing methods are faulty or that this section is under much stronger geological drift than we have anticipated." Binali carefully balanced her weight on a beam to get closer to the part of the cave wall that looked like it had sacked and folded in on itself. Lergten grumbled something under his breath and pulled her back to tie a rope to her belts. They were supposed to be roped tight at all times but Binali was always the last one to actually remember that.

She flashed a thanks at Lergten and leaned out again to hold her stethoscope against the wall. Inji held her breath, even though she knew from experience that Binali couldn't hear anything when she had the pads from the stethoscope over her ears. Binali took out an iron rod and tapped the rockface in a slow pattern, listening intently. After many minutes -- Inji was already getting impatient -- she finally took off the earpads and leaned back.

"It definitely sounds different, like a new cavity has formed there. That would explain the destruction on this side, such a shift inside of the mountain would cause massive deformations and adjustments to this whole area." Binali spread out her arms to indicate the size of the affected area and it included almost everything they could see. "That means we could get shifting and faulting right around this scaffolding. This area is not safe and the scaffolding will fail."

Inji gasped, "Are you sure?"

Binali nodded. "I'm here to assess whether this area is safe to return to and I'm saying, based on what I know and my recent findings, that this area is unstable, not suitable for residential living." She pulsed her lights in confidence.

Lergten snorted. "The mayor won't like that, Mekken is already overcrowded, losing this part would mean that almost a quarter of the population will have to move to the other cities." 

"How ironic," Binali said, "thanks to your suncaves, they finally have the protein shortage under control and now they have to reduce their population."

Inji sighed. They just had the first massive harvest, an enormous success for the suncave, with a harvest yield 400% over the normal rate. And the next harvest was only a few weeks out. The other cities already put in demands for their own suncaves. The old lumi-fungi farmers were not happy and spread the rumor that the sun-grown protein was not as nutritious and tasty as the traditional grown protein. But only very few people believed them. 

Not having a protein shortage led to lifting the birth control act. With enough food resources for sustentation of the population, the quarians could grow again. Losing part of Mekken would make overpopulation a problem again and new residential caverns could not get constructed as fast as it was necessary anyway. Lergten was right, the mayor would not like this at all.

"I'll talk to the mayor," Inji said. She was supposed to meet him anyway, once again for a date that somehow turned into an official business meeting. The same stuff had happened three times already. Of all four dates they had had, only the first actually was a normal date in a restaurant. After that, whatever date they had arranged turned into a business meeting. Even when Inji had taken him to the unfinished suncave to watch the stars, they had to take his assistant and Lergten with them. That date was a lot less romantic than Inji had it imagined before. 

Binali crawled back towards the new gap in the rockface. "I can't see how deep it is, hand me the light-tube," she held her hand out and Lergtern placed it into her hand reluctantly. That light-tube was his very special baby. Binali stretched as far as she could to shine the blue light into the tunnel. "I still can't see how deep it is, let's send the robot in."

"No, can't do that." Lergten pointed upwards to the severed steampipe. "Not enough pressure on the steam pipes until that up there is fixed." 

"Sekka!" Binali flashed angrily and climbed further up in the shaky scaffolding. The blue beam of the light-tube travelled over the slanted wall as she looked for more cracks. Inji followed her and climbed over to the side above the new tunnel. The wall began to slant here and transformed into the ceiling. From below she had seen some cracks between the stalactites that she wanted to investigate. 

It was difficult to climb the scaffolding, it had lost connection to the walls and was swaying. A few pebbles rained down on her and she used her own light-tube to shine blue light over the section above her. She froze and angeled her light to see better. The shock had her draw in a breath with a sharp hiss that made her colleagues look up to her.

"What is it?" Lergten called to her. His voice was so loud that it vibrated through the scaffolding. 

"Shh, quiet!" She tried to keep her voice down but still loud enough for Lergten to hear her. Dust trickled down on her from the stalactites and she began to climb down as fast as she could. "Go! Leave!" she whispered to the others with all the urgency she could put in her voice. "Get away, hurry!"

Binali climbed down but she kept looking at Inji and slipped on a bar. Lucky for her, Lergten had paid attention and caught her. They crawled back to the walkway, making this whole section of the scaffolding sway. Inji almost lost her balance but she kept on climbing towards the walkway. "It's loose," she whispered when she was close enough for Binali and Lergten to hear her, "the whole section up there is cracked, it might come down any second!" She frantically waved to the others to move and not wait for her. "Go!"

Binali turned around and ran down the walkway towards the next intersection, pulling Lergten on his arm behind her. The vibrations of their steps forced Inji to stop climbing for a few seconds until the scaffolding stopped swinging. When she felt secure again, she started lowering herself down on the bars, step by step as fast as she could. Another rain of dust and pebbles fell down on her.

She finally reached the lower cross section of the scaffolding and crawled more than ran towards the walkway. A tiny sound like the crumbling of a parchment was all the warning she got before part of the ceiling came down. Stalactites crashed on the scaffolding and on the walkway, an arm's length away from her. The walkway folded up on itself, trapping Inji inside. Another load of stones and rocks crashed down, right where Inji was lying but the back of the walkway over her body protected her. In the silence that followed, she dared to take a shaky breath only to scream as the walkway broke off the scaffolding and fell down. 

The folded up piece of metal groaned, sliding and screeching along the bars as it crashed down. Inji cried out as another hard collision catapulted her out of the contraption and threw her into the scaffolding. She heard more than felt her ribs breaking. Her fall stopped hard in a tangle of metal bars but more of the scaffolding piled up on her. One broken beam flew at her like a spear and almost stabbed her, another trapped her leg and twisted it. Inji cried out, she couldn't move and the pain was unbearable. She kept on screaming until the world went dark.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Thanks for reading!_


	11. The Idea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I know, I know it's been a while. Sorry and thank you for coming back to read the next chapters._

* * *

Light in her eyes. Her eyes did not want to stay open. A numb feeling around her limbs. She tried to move but her body did not listen. That should have unnerved her but she only sighed and relaxed into the floating feeling. 

A noise tickled her mind. She tried to wave it off but it persisted. The noise kept repeating, and she tried concentrating on it. She knew that word, it had a color she loved. She aimed for it, swam towards it. It was muffled but she recognized her name. Someone said her name, called her. She had to answer but the voice kept swimming away, dancing like a flickering light. It made her giggle.

She finally managed to open her eyes and the world came back. An unfamiliar face stared at her, calling her name. She tried focussing on it but somehow reality kept slipping away from her. It was tiring, confusing and she liked the floating feeling much better. But the voice kept calling her and it looked like she wouldn't stop unless she answered so she gathered all her energy and flashed her lines at her.

"Ah, very good. Welcome back, Inji'Zora." The unfamiliar voice tickled her again but it became easier to focus on it now. She could also open her eyes and move her head. The edges of her vision twinkled in many colors but she could see clearly right in front of her. The talking person leaned over her, she wore the robe of a nurse. She had an iron rod with wires on it in her hand and was moving it over her arms and upper body. The rod made her feel warm wherever it passed over.

To the left of her two faces were smiling at her and it took her a while to bring them into focus. Then she recognised her parents, both of them pulsing in blue, looking worried and relieved at the same time. Behind them, Gilaan and Heon showed the same pattern of worry and relief. She focused on her own lights and pulsed out a happy note, showing them that she was fine.

The nurse pulled the blanket to the side and moved the rod over her legs. Inji raised her head to see and noticed that her right leg was wrapped in bandages and fixed with splints. It confused her that she didn't feel pain. The nurse finished her legs and pulled the blankets back over her and put another pillow behind her head. She looked at her critically and then turned to a tray with little jars of medication. She counted a few drops of a liquid into a glass of water and added a spoonful of powder and stirred the water until it had turned green. 

"This will put you right out once you have taken it, so I will give you some more time with your friends and family first. You might feel a little uncomfortable as the painkiller wears down, this will make you feel better quickly but it will make you sleepy." The nurse set the glass on a table beside her bed and gathered her things on the tray. "I'll be back in a little while to chase out your visitors." She smiled but flashed her lights in a menacing way and Inji had no doubt that she would clear this room quickly.

The nurse left and Inji turned to her parents. "Hey, mother, father, guess what I discovered?" 

Her mother wiped off tears and smiled. "What, my little mushroom?"

Inji cringed at the use of her old nickname. "I confirmed that northern Mekken isn't stable. Who would have thought?" A giggle grew into a full on laugh that made her shake all over. The painkillers were really screwing with her. Her ribs began to hurt from laughing. Her right leg felt heavier and a sensation of pressure crawled through it. She would have to take the medicine soon.

"My girl, you almost died!" her mother whispered and both her parents were crying again. 

"How are Lergten and Binali?" she croaked. Speaking was becoming painful now. 

"They are fine, they were not injured," Heon said. 

"You broke your leg," Gilaan said, reaching over to stroke over her cheek, "you also broke two ribs and you got some cuts." She pointed to the marks on her arm, the skin was already healing.

"You lost consciousness," her father said, "and your colleagues had to pull you out of a mess of scaffolding beams. It's a miracle none of them stabbed you to death."

Inji remembered the beam coming towards her like a spear and narrowly missing her.

By now it felt like one had stabbed her to death, the pain in her ribcage making it hard to breathe. She took the glass and swallowed the green liquid. It tasted ghastly but a few seconds later she felt the pain ebb away, making room for a nice warmth crawling up her spine. Her eyelids were getting heavy and she had to concentrate to form words. "We need that conference, we have to find a new perspective, the caves are getting unstable, we have to... to... the caverns and Mekken, we have to find another way..."

The light changed, glittering in bright colors all around her. "Hey, what?" she called to them. She wanted to point to the pretty swirls on the edge of her vision but her hands didn't quite move the way she wanted. She saw her parents smile at her before her eyes closed and the glittering colors carried her away.

The next few days alternated in further flights on the colors and short phases of awareness. The doctor told her that her bones were healing nicely, her bruises would turn green before they would disappear, but they also healed nicely. The nurse lowered the dose of the painkillers, which Inji actually liked even though she missed the flights on the colors. But the stuffed feeling in her brain and the fuzziness of her tongue began to go on her nerves.

Gilaan and Heon had visited her everyday and Veelen had showed up too but for some reason, everytime he came around she was drifting off in the painkiller sleep. She had seen him smile before she drifted off and hoped that he had seen her smile as well.

She was getting anxious, nobody was telling her what happened in Mekken and what the experts said about the stability of the caves. She had felt two small tremors while she laid in this hospital bed, one time it was quite extraordinary as she had just gotten a new dose of painkillers.

Today the nurse had not given her the strong painkillers, only a small dosage of some relaxant. She felt the pain in her leg a little and her ribs still ached when she took a deep breath but her head was clearer than ever. The nurse had brought her news pamphlets and she tried catch up on two weeks of news. 

The instability of that part of Mekken was of course the main news story. The area was locked down and people had to get relocated elsewhere. The other cities, especially Tullnok, were not so happy about the influx of relocators. While they did what they could to help, resources and space were tight in the smaller cities. Not to mention the strain on the steam system and the new light system. Heon's blue lights were replacing the gas lanterns everywhere because they were easier to handle but more people meant more light was needed and that meant more power cells had to be charged and distributed.

Luckily, the new protein farm in Suncave Star was undamaged and after some initial confusion about where the harvest was supposed to be distributed to, food at least was not scarce. But residential areas were limited and it took time to prime and build a new residential cave. The constructors and architects were working feverishly on a new cave next to Erken. The rock in this part of the mountains was extremely dense, so it was expected to be a very stable cave. But the natural cave was small and it had to be widened in all directions. The construction resulted in so much rubble, that a crew in protective gear had to shift it through a lightube up to the surface. Inji had initially looked at that cave as a promising location for a sunfarm but living space took priority now. Still, it would be weeks until people could move into that cave.

The mayors of the citycaves agreed on another population law, holding back child licenses again to reduce the growth of the population. That was of course not a solution for the current amount of people that need to be placed. A second emergency law demanded a minimum of four people living in a house, otherwise they would get cut from the protein provisions. 

Inji kept on reading with a dim feeling of annoyance in her gut. Damage control, this was all just damage control. No one asked why the caves suddenly became unstable after hundreds of years of stability. No one wondered what they could do, once they ran out of room under the mountains. That especially unnerved her, she had seen that the mountains were not infinite when she was still a child. Everyone in her exploration group back then had seen it, the professor probably had reported it to his supervisors. But no one spoke of that, no one even thought about the fact that the quarians could possibly run out of room.

The door slid to the side and Heon and Gilaan entered. Heon's lights were flashing in excitement and he could barely suffer through the greetings until he burst out with the news. "I made a surface-light collector!" 

Inji wanted to jump out of the bed but her leg reminded her with a stab of pain to keep sitting. She flashed her lights back at him. "How? How did you do it? Where did you test it?"

"In Suncave Star. I modified the cells and bred them to be more susceptible to yellow light."

"Yellow light?" Inji tried to recall everything she knew about surface light, it was a mixture of different wavelengths but it never looked yellow to her.

"We can't see that it is yellow, it's too bright for our eyes, right?" Heon continued, almost jumping up and down in excitement. "But one of the spectrometers fell down during a tremor and one of the coils broke and it tuned itself to a higher wavelength. That way I could see that there was a whole section of the light spectrum that I had pretty much ignored so far, right? My cells were made for blue wavelengths. And I discovered that the fungi that had adapted to the surface light had developed different cells specifically for that light."

Inji's breath hitched. "That's why they grow so fast, it's not just _more_ light, it's different wavelengths!" 

"Yes!" This time Heon really jumped up and made the glasses on the side table rattle. Gilaan gave them both a mocking light pulse of annoyance. She sat down on a chair and checked the news pamphlet, leaving them to their tech talk. 

Heon was flailing his arms and his lines were glittering in happiness. "I managed to fuse those yellowlight cells with my bluelight cells and could breed a batch of them. This morning, I spread them out on a plate in Suncave Star, connected a powermeter and two power cells to it and let the surface light fall on it." He grabbed her shoulder and almost blinded her with the brightness of his eyes. "I harvested so much power! It almost blew the powermeter, the power cells were charged in 2 minutes, that's like 1000% more efficient than under the lumi-fungi, right? I had to cool them so they wouldn't blow up! I even had to cool the collector cells." 

"That is an amazing breakthrough!" Inji called out, "amazing! Don't you agree, Gilaan?"

Gilaan sighed. "Yes, amazing, totally amazing, I have heard all this for two hours now, he would not shut up about it." 

"Think of what this could do," Inji said, tapping her fingers on the blanket, "how much energy we would have." Her mind went into overdriving playing through scenarios at high speed. "You need your own suncave, a big testfield, new connectors and wires..."

"I'm growing the cells as fast as I can, they really grow faster in surface light. I could probably cover a small suncave with them in about a week," Heon said. 

"Talk to the mayors. Talk to Veelen first," Inji said after thinking for a little while. "With all the displaced people and the construction going on, he would have good use for more energy. I'm sure some of the tools could be adapted to the collected energy and be independent of the steam pipes."

Gilaan put the pamphlet away and came over to Heon's side. "They had to find a place to live for so many people, even we had to take two people in. Two children, their parents are in the hospital." She suddenly lit up in a warm purple and leaned her head against Heon. "It actually made us think about, well, starting a family ourselves."

Inji squeaked. "That would be wonderful!" She stretched out her arms to beckon her friends over so that she could hug them. Her ribcage hurt a bit during the hug but she didn't mind. 

Heon pulled back first, secretly wiping his eyes. "We can't right away of course," he mumbled, "they're not giving out licenses. The new cave at Erken won't be finished for a while, moving the rubble to the surface takes a really long time." 

A scenario grew in Inji's mind, an idea about the future of the quarians.

They kept hollowing the rock to make more caverns to live in but what was the end-scenario in this? How long could they keep going? If the tremors got even worse, no cave would be safe. They were running out of room, the mountains were rejecting them. Where else could they go but to the surface? 

She pulsed her lights once and Gilaan slowly let go of her. "I'm sorry, Gilaan, I hope you get a license soon. But I've been thinking, how long can we all keep going like this?"

"What do you mean?" Gilaan asked. 

"All we do is damage control, finding ways to deal with one catastrophe after another. What if there is no good ending here? What if the tremors get worse? What if city after city gets destroyed in cave-ins?" Inji looked at her friends, waiting for them to come to their own conclusions.

Gilaan was the first to light her lines in insight. "You want to move to the surface. You want to leave the caves."

"I think it is our only option," Inji said, keeping her voice low.

Heon stared out ahead, like he always did when he was running calculations in his mind. "Even if we move now, it would take months to actually move every single person to the surface. We would need shelter, protective suits, masks, and food of course. My power cells would work perfectly but everything else would have to be adapted. No steamsystem, no fungi."

"I'm not saying that it will be easy," Inji said, "I know that it will take a long time but the sooner we start the better. If a big tremor destroys half of the caves, we should have an escape plan ready."

"But," Gilaan placed her hand on hers, "quarians don't even think about the surface. The others have not seen it, like we have. They don't know what it's like. They won't believe that it is even possible."

"They didn't believe sunfarming to be possible either," Inji said. "But now we can finally feed everyone. How many tremors have there been since the cave-in at Mekken?"

"They're saying that it wasn't really cave-in," Heon said. 

"What? Because not all of the cave fell on my head?" 

Gilaan squeezed her hand. "It's okay, don't get so angry." She looked around and lowered her voice even more. "I spoke to Binali, she has placed seismographs in the outer caves and had them constantly mark the parchment. She said there have been tremors every day."

"Every day?" Heon and Inji called out.

"Small ones, not enough to cause rocks to drop, but still, enough for cracks. She says it's getting worse."

"What are the mayors saying to that, the other geologists, the architects?" Inji asked, knowing what the answer would be. Gilaan just shrugged and Inji let her head fall back on the pillow. "They are not even talking about it, right? They don't want to think about it so they ignore it."

Gilaan threw her hands up. "You can't expect them to just pack their bags and leave the caves. Quarians die on the surface, we all learned that. Only maybe two handful, including us, have ever seen the surface. We have to convince people that it is safe."

"I'm going to try to convince the mayors," Inji said. "But if that doesn't work, I'm just gonna take people on surface trips, let them see that it is safe."

"Stop!" Gilaan called out. "You don't know that! Just because we didn't get sick doesn't mean it will be safe for everyone. We have to test that and we need better masks, masks that have dark glass integrated, body suits to protect against particles. If we are going to introduce quarians to the surface, we have to do it right." 

Inji stared at Gilaan in amazement. "You really thought about this?"

"I thought about going out there again ever since we closed that hole," Gilaan said, her arms crossed defiantly. Heon came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her.

"You never told me that, my elshira." He turned her around and his lines were shining. "I'll help you, we can make better masks, better overcoats and we can go out there again."

"You have to take care of your power cells and the collector cells."

Heon shook his head. "The collector cells grow pretty much on their own and I put Ledda in charge of the power cells. I'll find time to build masks and you find someone to make the suits for us." 

Gilaan smiled and placed a kiss on his cheek. "Thank you, love."

"And what can I do?" Inji asked.

Gilaan turned around and quickly wiped her eyes. "You have to talk to the mayors, especially Veelen, and other important people. Convince them that this is something we have to do." 

Inji flashed her lines in disgust. "Why do I have to talk to them, I don't even like talking to people!" 

"But you're good at it," Gilaan said, "and you are convincing. I'm sure it also helps that the mayor of Mekken fancies you and if you can convince Mekken, the other cities will follow."

"Fine, I'll talk to Veelen and to geologists and other scientists but I'm not talking to the lumi-farmers. Those guys can rot underground for all I care," Inji growled. The lumi-farmers were still fighting her suncave farms as the demand for their slow growing proteins dwindled. 

A short time later, Heon and Gilaan said their goodbyes. They had to go home and take care of the two children in their care, but they promised to come back the next day. Inji was left alone, brooding about tremors and caves and how she could possibly convince the quarians to move to the surface.

The sound of the door sliding open pulled her out of her brooding and her heart did a little jump when she saw Veelen walk in. He wore a serious looking business robe in light purple that contrasted nicely with his dark blue skin. He smiled warmly when he saw her and Inji just knew that she was blushing and her lines were flickering with excitement. 

"Looks like my lady of sunlight is up and well today," he said and bowed his head to her. Inji giggled to her utter embarrassment. Veelen took off his robe and revealed his arms that way. He flashed her a friendly note with his lines that Inji answered as she invited him to sit on the bed next to her. 

He took her hand and trailed his finger along the line on top of it. "How are you today?" he asked.

Inji suppressed the nervous shiver that his touch caused in her. "I feel much better, my head is finally clear again."

"How is the leg? Still painful?"

"They won't let me get up yet but as long as I don't move it, it isn't painful." Inji felt herself pulsing her lights again and she raised her hand to cover the dark spot on her cheek out of habit. Veelen pulled her hand away and trailed his finger over the scar.

"I was really worried about you. You could have died." He sounded like he wanted to say more but he stayed quiet.

"I was lucky, I guess."

"Very much." Veelen kept stroking her scarred cheek and suddenly leaned forward to press his lips to hers. It was only a short brush, the softest touch, but she needed a few moments to breathe again. 

He leaned back and looked down on his hand holding hers. "I wish I could tell you to not work with the emergency response team anymore but I know you wouldn't listen to that anyway."

Inji laughed out. "No, I wouldn't."

He sighed and pressed the palm of his hand against the side of her head. He took a deep breath but Inji didn't let him say whatever he wanted to say. She placed her hand on his neck and pulled him forward and kissed him. A real kiss this time, pulling and pressing and hungry.

They finally had to break apart for air, leaning their foreheads against each other. Veelen kept stroking her scar with his thumb. 

"I wanted to kiss you for a long time, Inji. I'm sorry that I had so little time for you." He kissed her again, gently sucking on her lips.

"It's okay," Inji whispered when they stopped kissing. "I knew you were busy, there's a lot going on in Mekken."

"Unfortunately you are right, I'm expected at another emergency conference in a few minutes. I wish I could stay."

"Don't worry, I'll be fine," she said. She remembered what she had spoken about with her friends and straightened her back as best as she could in the bed. "There's another thing I wanted to talk about with you."

"What, my lady of light?" 

"The caves, they're getting unstable." She watched the smile fall from his face and turn into the familiar face of a politician. 

"That has not been proven," he deflected, the lines on his arms dimming down to not tell his true emotions.

Inji held his hand that he wanted to pull away. "Veelen, please, think back when you were a child, how many missions did the emergency response team have?"

"What is that supposed to mean? When I was a child, there weren't..."

"Exactly!" Inji held her finger up. "There weren't any response teams because they were not needed. There were no tremors, no cave-ins. Now, we had to establish emergency protocols and population laws. My friend, a geologist, says she can measure tremors on her seismographs every day!"

"Every day?"

"Yes, small ones, not enough to cause any larger shifting but it's there. The mountain is moving, the caves are in danger." Her voice got louder and louder. "Don't you see? It's getting worse!"

"Enough!" Veelen called out. "Please keep your voice down. Do you think I'm not aware of all that?"

"Well, nobody is talking about it," Inji huffed out. "We should discuss this, all of us, find a solution."

"We have experts working on this, I can assure you," Veelen said with annoyance playing on his lines. Inji let go of his hand.

"So what are your experts proposing? More scaffolding, more beams? Stronger rafters? Population control?" Inji blinked her lights angrily at him. 

"Something like that. Please, Inji, trust me that we are thinking about every possible scenario."

"What about moving to the surface?" Inji asked, keeping her lines under tight control.

"What are you talking about?"

"Leave the caves, move to the surface of this planet. We'll have so much more room to grow and no rocks will crash on our heads." 

Veelen stared at her with his mouth open. He was so perplexed that he even forgot to control his lights, the lines on his arms pulsing in hectic confusion. "You can't be serious."

Inji felt her lines flare up in brilliant white, her eyes were shining light on his face. "Yes, I am. Our future is on the surface. I'm convinced that we will all be buried under the collapsing mountain in these caves if we don't move out." 

"That is... don't you know that the surface is poisonous? The sun will burn us alive!"

"I've been on the surface." Inji paused to watch his reaction. He stared at her, displaying something like fear. "I've been on the surface, I saw the stars and I saw the sun rise." She took his hand again. "And I still lived, I did not get sick."

"You saw the stars outside on the surface?" he asked, his voice almost inaudible.

Inji lowered her voice to the same level and whispered in his ear, "Yes, I saw the stars and there are millions of them. The sky, this planet, it's so much bigger than we can imagine." 

Veelen took her head in his hands and stared at her like he saw her for the first time. "You did not get sick?"

"No, I wore a breathing mask and dark glass and an overcoat just like we did in the suncave. It's not as dangerous as they make us believe." She tried to read the expression on his face but he just looked thoughtful.

His thumb traced the scar on her cheek again. "Is that where you got your scar?"

"No that is older. I'll tell you another time."

He seemed to work the information over in his head. Finally he leaned back. "So you would have us live on the surface, wearing masks all the time, hiding in the shadows until the sun goes down? What kind of life is that?"

"One where we don't get buried alive in the collapsing caves of a mountain range that is crumbling." Inji fixed him with her gaze until he looked away with a sigh.

"It still feels a little extreme," Veelen said, taking her hands in his again. "We don't belong on the surface, we live here. The caves are our home."

Inji grabbed his hands so hard that he winced. "But we used to live up there, a long time ago."

"You don't know that," Veelen said. "Historical evidence is sketchy at best." 

"But what if it is true?" Inji let her thumb stroke over the lines on his hands. "What if we moved into the caves a long time ago, and now it is time to move back out?" 

Veelen sighed. "I can't promise anything but I will think about it and get my experts to work on it. It is at least a scenario we have to consider."

"I'll gather more facts, everything we can get about the tremors. Maybe we can get the geologists to make a prediction about the tremors, if they are getting stronger and how fast. That might give us a timeframe." Inji mentally prepared a list of people she needed to talk to, Binali being on top of it.

"Inji, don't expect people to love this idea," Veelen said with urgency. "People don't want to hear that the caves could be collapsing."

"How do you know? You aren't telling people anything," Inji called out, "you're keeping everyone in the dark. People should know what could happen so that they can prepare!" 

"Oh Inji, you have no idea how people react." He shook his head, smiling in the most patronizing way. Inji ripped her hands away. Veelen looked up in surprise, apparently realizing what he had just said. "Sorry, I didn't mean to sound so arrogant. But the people in your circle of friends are mostly scientists, used to dealing with facts and probabilities. The normal people of Mekken would panic, and when people panic they do the most ridiculous things. They don't go to work anymore, they might set their house on fire, you just don't know. We are trying to keep everyone safe, trust me."

"But we can't wait till the last minute, we have to prepare for a move like that," Inji said. "We have to produce masks and overcoats and we have to build houses, shelter of some kind, before everything is coming down. And first of all, we need a test case, a small group that moves to the surface and tests the conditions." She took his hands again and squeezed them. "And we can't wait too long for that."

Veelen freed one of his hands and stroked over her cheek. "Alright, I'll talk to some people. Mekken might investigate the possibility of moving to the surface. I can't promise anything but I get someone on it."

"I won't shut up about this, you know that," Inji said, smiling a little. 

"I thought as much." Veelen kissed her on the cheek on her scar and then left. 

Inji let herself fall back on the bed. She tested moving her foot a little and whimpered when the pain shot through her leg. "Stupid leg!" she hissed through her teeth. She couldn't wait to be on her feet again and work on the Surface Project.

 


	12. Respect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inji tries to convince the quarians that they have to leave the caves.

(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)

_ Diary of Inji'Zora Jerall, 21.5 Changes _

_They finally released me from the hospital one and a half weeks ago. I'm not supposed to put weight on the leg and to be honest it still hurts much more than I said but I just could not spend another day in that sekkada hospital. Ever since I could walk, I have been talking to every prickhead in these sekkada caves that I could get hold of about moving the quarians to the surface. If I thought I've known frustration before then I have realized now that there are levels of frustration that I never imagined. Sometimes I just want to hit these stupid people._

_Heon has send a messenger, apparently constructing the masks was not enough of a challenge for them, Gilaan and him have another super secret project they want to show me. I hope I get over there safely, the tremors are coming more frequently every day. I don't understand why people don't see that._

(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)

Inji had to step out of the way and pressed herself against the railing to let the first response team through. She wasn't on the team today, she was still recovering from her injuries, but she knew which section had gotten hit with another tremor. People had begun calling it the shakes. The mountains had the shakes and everyday something came down in the caves. They had not had big cave-ins in a while but it rained dust and pebbles every day. People had started to wear helmets or reinforced hats.

The shakes were a normal part of everyone's life now but Inji still made no progress in her project to move the quarian people to the surface. Nobody wanted to hear about that. The fear of the surface was so ingrained that the option was completely ignored. Inji and her small group of friends, Gilaan, Heon, Binali and, reluctantly, Lergten were pretty much alone in their belief that they needed to prepare for the move.

In the last few weeks, Inji had developed new levels of hate and disgust for politicians and she was beginning to doubt in falling in love with one was such a good idea. She had spoken to everyone, every mayor, every mayor advising scientist, every mayor advising assistant. She had answered the same questions over and over and explained the same facts again and again. But the only one who was at least willing to fund a small team to explore the possibility of a move to the surface was Veelen'Sar Elger, and Inji was under no illusion that that had more to do with their relationship than with her persuasiveness. 

More pebbles rained down and Inji hurried as fast as she could on her barely healed leg to get under a shield. These shields had gotten installed over most walkways and it made her irrationally angry how many resources had been spent on those. Doctoring at the symptoms instead of working on a real solution. She shook off those angry thoughts, there was no use in getting angry over this now.

The pebble shower had stopped and Inji walked over a crossroad and climbed slowly up to the laboratories two levels above her. Climbing was still quite painful for her and she gnashed her teeth to stop herself from whimpering. A sigh of relief left her when she finally reached the upper walkway. On the right hand side, in a large building of three connected cabins, the collector cells were seeded. On the left side, steam machines thumped in the typical rhythm, producing blue light tubes and small power cells. Up ahead, Heon and Gilaan occupied a new building and had asked to her to come into the lab immediately. She knew that they had worked on a new secret project and that Gilaan and him had lived in the lab for the last few weeks.

She knocked on the door, listening for any noises from inside but she could only hear the sound of the steam machines in the building behind her. She knocked again, louder this time. Just as she was getting very impatient, the door slid to the side. She stepped in and bumped her foot against a solid object. Luckily it was her uninjured leg, no lasting pain on this one. She looked down. She had kicked a small robot. It looked vaguely like the exploration robots but it had four legs instead of two front legs and two hind wheels. The small thing slowly turned and walked away. Inji followed it. 

Something was different about his robot and it took Inji a few seconds until she realized that it was not connected to the steam system! It walked around freely, without a steam pipe trailing behind it.

She followed the robot into the laboratory where Heon stood in the middle of the room, beaming with pride. Gilaan sat on a chair on the side, her face showing happy amusement. Heon picked up the robot when it had reached him and looked it over.

"Isn't he great?" Heon looked like he had made a baby. the pride of new fatherhood on his face.

Inji stepped over and looked closely at the little robot. "No steam connection," she assessed, "he uses your power cells?"

"Yes! He just needs to be recharged after a while but he can run around freely. Look at his legs, they each have grabbing claws, so he can climb up walls and even overhead." He turned and twisted the little robot so that Inji could see everything. 

Gilaan laughed from her desk. "That little robot is truly his baby. I may have helped but it's really his brainchild." She leaned back in her chair and pulsed out a happy pattern. "We call him Gethon, after Heon's last name."

"Your name should be in there too!" Heon protested but Gilaan just laughed.

"It's fine Heon, this is your baby and I don't need confirmation for my share of the work." She waved Inji over. "Now look at these beauties." She held a mask in her hand unlike any Inji had ever seen. It was a full facial mask, the lower part a breathing filter and the upper part was one curved piece of glass. Dark glass with the same curve was snapped onto it, it was detachable for different levels of protection against the sunlight. The mask had straps attached to fix it over the face. Inji tried one on, in the relative darkness of the laboratory it made her almost blind but she could see that her vision was not impaired by the dark glass. It curved perfectly to the sides, so that she could see what was next to her without turning her head.

"This is beautiful!" she said and was slightly surprised by the way her voice sounded through the breathing mask. It was muffled and she wondered if that could be a problem in the long run. If they really were to move permanently to the surface, the overcoats they had to wear would already impair their lines. Having their voices muffled would make communicating very annoying.

She took the mask off and examined the inside. Gilaan watched her, her lights glowing. She grinned and just as Inji wanted to say something she spoke up. "What is it? Your thinking face tells me that we are about to learn some new revelation."

"Not sure if it is a revelation but I was thinking that we should improve the way we speak through the masks. It could get kind of problematic to do things on the surface if we can't understand each other." Inji looked around in the lab, every flat surface was filled with devices and parts, there had to be something they could use. "Heon? Do you have speakers like the ones built into a waveat?" 

Heon knelt on the floor, adjusting something in his little robot. He looked up as if he was surprised that someone else was in the room too and waved vaguely towards a shelf on the wall. Gilaan shook her head and pulled Inji over to the shelf.

"There's no point in talking to him right now, trust me," she said. "In the last few weeks, I sometimes found him asleep on the floor, right next to his Gethon." She rummaged through boxes and drawers and pulled out differently shaped parts. "I think this here could work as a transmitter and we use this to receive," she placed two small objects on a tray, "and this is the smallest kind of speaker we have. Heon used one like this for his Gethon, even though it doesn't even speak."

"It will," came from the floor.

"Look at that, it lives!" Gilaan laughed and moved back to her worktable with the tray. She pulled out a few wires and began connecting the pieces. 

Inji picked up the mask again. "Can you fit all of this into the mask?" she wondered.

"I think so. The speaker has to go on the outside on top of the breather and the receiver is small enough to sit inside just under the mouth, I think. We just need a small powersource, I'm not sure yet how we can work that in."

Heon suddenly stood up. "That's easy, use the miniature cell we made."

"But that would only work for maybe two hours, we would have to keep exchanging them," Gilaan objected.

Heon laughed out loud. "It's the surface! We have surface light. Just connect a few collector cells to it and it will charge almost all the time!"

Gilaan flashed him a bright light. "Of course! We have to wear hoods or hats anyway, we just put collector cells on them and we'll have individual suit energy for everything! We could do all kinds of things with that."

A picture formed in Inji's mind. "If everyone is wearing that and if we have energy to fuel another transmitter, we could establish a long distance communication network, sort of like a waveat but an individual one for each suit. We could work at different places on the surface and still talk to each other as if we were sitting next to each other."

Heon stepped over and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Brilliant idea!" He turned to Gilaan, "sometimes she is really smart, right?"

Gilaan stood up and pressed a kiss on her cheek. "You should let that mind of yours run free sometimes, love, who knows what else you come up with." She went back to the shelf and put more parts on the tray. She began connecting another transmitter to the speaker system and tried to fit it in and around the mask. "I think we have to rethink this. The mask has to be connected to some kind of headgear that holds the collector cells. Maybe we can fit the power cells and this second transmitter somewhere in the back then."

Inji settled down beside Gilaan and grabbed a slate to make drawings. She wasn't an artist but she could sketch out things in a way that another person would understand what she meant. After a tossing around a few ideas, they settled on a design for the mask with a hood covered with collector cells attached to it and a bag with power cells and the second transmitter to be worn on the back. The pack and the hood would have to be connected after the mask was put on. They designed the internal speaker system with a miniature power cell to be independent of the backpack so that it would work even if something went wrong with the other system.

Gilaan insisted on an internal metal lining for the backpack to form a basin, in case one of the power cells began leaking although Heon loudly assured that that almost never happened. They kept bickering about that while they worked. Inji leaned back with a happy sigh. She loved being with her friends and constructing a mask and suit felt ten times more satisfying than talking to politicians and their assistants. 

In a few hours she was expected to appear at a fancy party for all the important people of Mekken. Inji found it ridiculous that they were holding a party at a time like this but Veelen had explained to her that the people needed the normalcy, that they needed the distraction to keep going. He also told her that he wanted to have an evening with her that was not about the cave-ins or the surface. An evening just about nice food, music and a performance by two gifted musicians. It sounded rather boring to her but spending an evening with Veelen still felt like a nice idea.

Inji closed her eyes and apparently she dozed off because the next thing she knew was that Gilaan was gently shaking her. 

"Inji, love, aren't you supposed to go to a party tonight?" 

"A quarter to low-cycle, yes, what time is it?" Inji stretched until her ribs reminded her that they didn't like that.

"I think you have to get going," Gilaan said, "do you know what you will wear?" 

"Well, I... I thought I would buy something."

"Love! You don't have time for that!" Gilaan yelled out, "you have to be there in under a quarter, no time for shopping." She jumped up and pulled her with her behind her. "I give you one of my robes to wear and we might have just enough time to do your braids. Hurry!" she ordered when Inji didn't react quick enough.

A quarter later, Inji stood in front of a beautifully decorated hall in one of Gilaan's purple robes. The robe had a slim cut and it was a bit shorter on Inji than on Gilaan but her friend had assured her that it looked even prettier because it brought out the curve of her calf. Inji remembered that Veelen had shown special interest in her calfs so this was probably a good idea. The scar from the fracture on her right calf had healed to a dark blue line wrapping around it and Inji kind of liked it. It looked like a vine was growing around her calf. Gilaan had had the same idea and had drawn tiny white flowers on it.

She also had tightened her braids and arranged them by some kind of magic into something that looked like a bundle of black ropes and vines with flowers flowing down her back. It was beautiful. Inji took a deep breath and walked inside. 

The room was dimly lit by gas lanterns at a comfortable level. Flowery vines hung from the ceiling and wrapped around the rafters, beams and columns of the hall. Colorful drapes covered every surface and the smell of exquisite food hung in the air. Inji suddenly realized that she was extremely hungry. She couldn't see Veelen anywhere and decided to pick something to eat before all her favorites were gone. 

She loaded a tray with Gilchen Fungi and a dip and found herself a quiet corner where she could watch the hall and the musicians without anybody bumping into her. The musician played an instruments with metal bells and bars that he beat with a stick. Inji had never seen or heard an instrument like that and stood entranced, watching him, while she chewed on her food. 

"You look breathtaking, my elshira. Like a fairy of the fates." 

Inji almost choked on a piece of fungi, Veelen had sneaked up on her and stood now directly behind her, his breath ghosting over her bare shoulders. She hurried to put the tray away and turned around. His hand came up to her cheek, stroking her scar and then travelled down her arms, following her lines.

"Beautiful, my elshira, breathtaking," he whispered. 

"Well," Inji found that her voice was quite hoarse, "you don't look so bad yourself." That was an understatement. He wore a white robe, slim and long, with big flowing sleeves with pink swirls on them. It contrasted nicely with his dark blue skin. His braids were pulled to the side and had shiny black ribbons tied into them. "I think breathtaking would be adequate for you too," she hesitated before she dared to say the same term of endearment that he had used, "Elshira."

His eyes lit up in a flash and he pulled her forward to kiss her. Soft nibbles on her lips made her weak in the knees, she grabbed his shoulders to keep her balance and suckled on his lower lip in return. He made a deep hum in the back of his throat and pulled her tighter. Inji pressed herself to him, soaking up the heat of his body. Experimentally, she flicked her tongue against his lips and almost squeaked when his tongue touched hers. The rest of the world around them just fell away as they kissed deeper and more urgently. 

A high pitched cough next to them made them break apart. Veelen's assistant stood next to them, partially shielding them from the room. "People are watching. I want to by no means intrude on your, ahem, happiness, but I feel that there could be a more appropriate time _and_ place for, ahem, this." She dipped her head towards the people at the food table, some of them giggled and one, probably someone from the news pamphlets, took notes.

Inji hid her face in her hands -- what an excellent start to this evening. Veelen dipped her head back up with a fingertip under her chin. 

"Please, my elshira, there is nothing to be ashamed of. Let them watch, spares me the long explanations with other women," he said. 

"Oh, how nice. Do I have to be afraid of other women fighting me over you?"

Veelen chuckled. "Of course not, I was only joking. Now," he linked her arm with his, "let me introduce you to some people."

"Do I have to?" Inji whined quietly, "I don't know any of these people, I have nothing in common with them."

"That may be true, but I'm not suffering through this alone," Veelen said resolutely, "I specifically wanted you here to make this whole ordeal more bearable." He turned to her and kissed her cheek. "Just smile, they will all love you."

"I'll try," she promised. She took a deep breath and smiled as best as she could. 

The evening passed in a blur, Veelen led her from one group of important people to the next and she learned whole new levels of small talk. The one, very obvious gap in all the conversations was the 'shakes'. It was like everyone had decided to ignore it and nobody even mentioned it. Not even when a light tremor shook the hall and caused some glasses to topple off the table. Inji couldn't understand it and the more she spoke to people about the music and the taste of protein and the new play at the theatre and the pictures of some artist that she had never heard about, the more she wanted to get on the stage and yell at people to open their eyes.

She slipped away from another group of very stylish people and got herself a glass of water. She needed some time to herself and leaned against the wall on the side, partially hidden by one of the colorful curtains. The music had changed and some people were dancing. Inji wasn't sure if she wanted to dance, right now she rather would have gone home.

She was about to sneak away to the exit, when she saw Veelen come towards her little corner, deep in conversation with some very influential people of Mekken. He didn't see her but she couldn't leave now. She looked for another way out when she caught a bit of the conversation. They were actually talking about the tremors and how Mekken could deal with this problem.

Finally, a conversation where she could actually participate in a meaningful way. She stepped forward as one of the older men asked Veelen if he had ever heard about the idea of moving all quarians to the surface. She was about to open her mouth to chime in when Veelen, unaware of her standing behind him, answered.

"We all know that that idea is a little extreme, it is just one of the scenarios that our scientists are working on," Veelen said. "We have scientists working on many solutions and sometimes they do get a little crazy in their ideas, you know how it is, but we have to let them play around with many things. Even the crazy ideas can sometimes bring us results." The whole group laughed and Veelen joined in. "I mean, who wants to run around with little helmets all the time? We'd look very silly, don't you think?" They all laughed some more.

Inji felt bile rise in her throat. She blinked away the tears that wanted to come and stepped forward, clearing her throat loudly. "It is unfortunate that Veelen'Sar Elger thinks that this is all just a big joke with silly helmets because I can assure you it is not." All eyes were on her and she decidedly did not look at Veelen. "Moving to the surface might be the only chance for survival we have and if it means that I have to wear a mask and a hood to protect myself from the sunlight then I will do that. I much prefer that to being dead, buried under the remains of these caves." She looked at the group, all of them silent in embarrassment or indignation. She turned around to leave and called over her shoulder, "now you have to excuse me, I think I had enough of parties." She glared at Veelen and left.

He caught up with her at the door and pulled her to the side. "Please, my elshira, wait.."

Inji snapped around and almost hit him with her elbow. "Don't you dare call me that! Don't you dare!" 

She pushed him away and faced him. "This is all just a joke to you. Let the silly little scientist play around with her silly ideas so you can get in her pants? Why not, it's not like there's much competition." 

"Please, Inji, listen, these are important people, they financed me and..."

Inji could hardly control the anger inside of her and hit his shoulder. "Shut up! You ridiculed me, you disrespected everything I do, what I fight for, for you this is just a silly joke, let's make fun of the silly scientist..." 

"Inji, I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

"Oh yes, you did. You never believed me, you never took me serious, you just wanted an easy lay."

"I would never..."

Inji threw her hands back and stepped away from him. "It doesn't matter! I hope you're not so petty to pull our funding now because I want to keep working on saving the quarians but I never want to see you again." She turned around, fighting back the tears that finally rose in her eyes.

Veelen caught her arm to stop her from leaving. "I'm sorry, I made a bad joke, I know..."

Inji stabbed her finger against his chest and ripped her arm out of his grip. "No, you _don't_ know! This isn't about making a bad joke, this is about _respect_ and you don't have any for me!" 

She turned around again and ran out onto the walkway. He called after her but she ignored him. She made it all the way to the next intersection until she could not hold back the tears anymore. Her knees gave out and she huddled into the entrance of a closed store and cried into the skirt of Gilaan's robe.

She couldn't say how long she sat there and cried but she got ripped out of her depressing thoughts by the blaring of the alarm. Another cave-in somewhere in Mekken. She got up, straightened her robe and ran towards the emergency base. She wiped away the tears as she ran. It was sad that things had not worked out with Veelen but she had more important things to do. Quarians were dying and she had no time to deal with broken romances. 

She had to move the quarians to the surface.

 


	13. The Sky

_ Diary of Inji'Zora Jerall +3 weeks _

_Our group has grown, Gilaan has pulled in many of the students into our movement. We call ourselves a movement now, a bit silly. But we need to inspire more people, even if I feel stupid that Gilaan calls me the leader of our 'movement'._

_Today we will do it. We will go out onto the surface to build a first, permanent base. We have constructed ten masks and suits._ _We have thick fabric to build tents and lots of protein base in tubes to carry. We even have water but I hope we will also find a water source on the surface. This has to work, this is the only way that we can convince people to make the move. I hope the fates are generous._

~***~

"I think we have everything," Inji said, "we just have to decide on the right time to move out."

Heon picked up a piece of parchment that had an unfamiliar curve written on it. "I may have an idea about that."

Everyone, Gilaan, Inji, Binali, Lergten and the new young student members, turned to look at him. Heon beamed, enjoying the attention. He cleared his throat and held up the parchment. "You all remember that I modified a pictograph to use on my Gethon."

Gilaan flashed her lines in humour, of course they all remembered, Heon had not shut up about this for days.

"Well, I took one of those small pictographs and rolled it into the exit that we used back when we went to the surface for the first time, Inji, Gilaan and me."

Gilaan jumped up and yelled at him. "You opened it? Did you somehow miss how we built masks and suits for protection? And you opened the hole just like that?"

"No, I wore a mask and I pulled the fabric just a little to the side to roll the pictograph inside and I closed it again right away. Only a thin cable peeked out of it." Heon held his hands up, he looked genuinely scared. "I didn't get sick, so everything is fine."

"Alright," Gilaan huffed. "Now what was the point of all that?"

"The pictograph can measure light. So I have a recorder connected to it that polls the level of light every few minutes. That way we can predict when it is night and when it is day!"

Inji shook her head. "We could tell that already from the light tunnels in the suncaves."

Heon flickered in embarrassment. "But... but this is more precise."

Gilaan pulled his head down and kissed him on his forehead. "Oh elshira, you just wanted to test your precious pictograph, didn't you?"

Heon mumbled something and held up the parchment again. "Anyway, if we make our way to cave Outward in the next quarter, we can be on the surface about two hours before the sun comes up. That way we have enough time to raise the first tents for protection before our power cells run out."

"And as soon as the sun comes up, we can collect energy again," Inji said. "Sounds like an excellent plan. I have contacted Mernel'Kitara from the news center to come with us to the exit and write about it in his pamphlet. I'll send him a messenger to meet us there in a quarter." She walked over to the door to wave down one of the messenger boys.

Gilaan came up on her side. "You should send a messenger to him too."

"Why should I, he doesn't care?" Inji grumbled, gnashing her teeth.

Gilaan placed her hand on Inji's arm and pulsed her lines in a calming way. "Veelen didn't cut the funding, so he does care. And since he funded this project, he should be informed of this next step."

Inji sighed. "Fine. I'll send him a message." A messenger boy appeared and she wrote down two notes, that sounded very much the same for him to deliver. She shook off any morose feelings that wanted to lodge themselves into her mind.

They stepped back inside to pack up the last things. Each of them had to carry big packs of tarp and slim iron beams for the tents and bags of provisions. When they left the laboratory, they looked like they were relocating several houses.

Carrying all the equipment made the trek to the newly named cave Outward slow and tedious. By the time they finally reached the industrial cave, all of them were ready for a break.

Since the last time they had been here, more scaffolding, and more buildings with machinery had been installed. Part of the cave had suffered a cave-in recently but lucky for them the scaffolding leading up to the old exit was still intact. A constructor had installed additional ladders and walkways so that it was easier to get to the exit than last time.

To Inji's surprise, a few hundred people had come to the cave to watch them go on the surface. She wasn't sure if they were really interested in the success of the mission of if they had come out of some morbid interest in seeing them fail. It didn't matter, Inji knew that they would succeed. It was the only way.

The crowd parted for them but it still took them longer than necessary to get to the ladder that was going to bring them upwards. Many people wanted to talk to Inji and Binali, wanted to know about the dangers and risks of cave-ins. Inji especially noticed the children, trying to touch their equipment and the accompanying parents, their faces drawn tight in worry. Despite what their leaders thought, people wanted to know what was going on, wanted to know about the dangers.

Inji felt terribly unprepared, she had only thought about the things she needed to pack to build the shelters and what kind of machinery and instruments they needed. Gratitude flooded her warmly when she saw Gilaan handing out pamphlets. Gilaan, wonderful, smart Gilaan had somehow foreseen this situation and had prepared pieces of parchments with a summary of what they knew about the 'shakes' and what they planned to do on the surface. She handed these parchments out with her winning smile and Inji was sure that she won over lots of new friends for the surface movement with her smile alone.

Many walkways and ladders later, they finally they arrived at the newly build ladder that would bring them directly up to the familiar ledge. The tarp, that Gilaan had nailed to the rockface, was covered in mold and almost indistinguishable from the rocks around it. Inji wondered why nobody asked about its existence. Maybe they didn't want to know, that seemed to have become a common coping mechanism recently.

The ledge was too small to hold everyone, so the progression stopped on the ladder after Gilaan, Inji and Heon had arrived at the top. Inji moved to remove the tarp but Gilaan stepped in her way and made a meaningful nod towards the crowd far down on the main walkway.

"What?" Inji asked.

"Say something."

"Why?"

Gilaan's lines lit up in amused annoyance. "Because they're waiting for some inspirational words from you. This is a big moment, I told you that you would have to give a speech."

Inji felt her lines flash irregularly. "Sekka, I forgot about that."

"Oh..." Gilaan showed a short flash of panic before she let her lines calm down to soothing white. "Just tell them what you always tell everybody, how this is the future for the quarians. Tell them what you would want to hear. Give them hope."

Inji searched her mind for inspirational words like that and came up with nothing. Her lights kept on flickering in panic, she took a deep breath and counted to six to calm down. Heon and Gilaan and Heon both gave her an encouraging smile and with another deep breath she turned towards the crown below her.

"Ehm, hello..." Her voice carried far in the cave, echoing off the walls around them. The people on the walkway quieted down and their glowing eyes all turned to her. "I should have prepared a speech but I forgot, there was so much to do the last few days..." A chuckle ran through the crowd and Inji relaxed a little.

"This is an important moment for us all," she said, her voice now louder and firmer. "We all have been affected by the Shakes, we all have experienced the tremors, the destruction, the cave-ins. Many think that we will learn to live with them, that we can build sturdier scaffolding and shields to protect us. Many hope that the Shakes will stop and that we will live safely again." She paused. Everyone looked at her. The sound of steam hissing from broken connectors from the shut down fabrication plant near by was the only thing to be heard. Even the children were quiet.

"I don't believe that. I am convinced that the tremors and the quakes will get worse. Our caves will be destroyed. This is a warning to us, a call to our wisdom. We have to move out of the caves before we get buried in them." The crowd got uneasy now, some people clearly disagreed with her words.

Inji raised her hands to quiet them down. "I know not all of you agree with me and I don't ask you to. But I ask you to at least think about it, to at least consider the surface as an alternative environment to live in. Call it an emergency plan, a far fetched vision but at least let us investigate the possibilities. The surface is rich in resources and energy, both can make our lives easier right now right here in the caves. And if the worst comes to, we'll have a place to got to." She saw people nod in the crowd. "We have nothing to lose but so much to win."

Applause rose up, slowly at first and then loud and strong. Inji nodded at the crowd, her skin prickling in a mixture of embarrassment and pride. She turned to find Gilaan beaming at her with bright white eyes. Heon looked over his shoulder and he looked equally happy. Inji let out a breath. She looked back to the crowd, trying to make out familiar faces. Some people she knew, neighbours, friends from school. Her gaze was drawn to the side and her breath hitched. Veelen stood there, his eyes shining bright. He didn't smile, he looked worried. Whether he was worried about her or about the outcome of this project he financed, Inji decided not to think about it.

She turned back to entrance of the outwards cave. It was time to put on the overcoats. They helped each other, closing the tight suits on the sides. The rest of the group had to wait for them to finish until they could get on the ledge.

Heon used pliers to pull out the nails that held the tarp up. He slowly lowered it to the ground and folded it up at the bottom. Inji took a breath, the strange, spicy and dry air tickled her nostrils. Next to her, Heon and Gilaan put on their masks but she hesitated. She believed that the surface was not dangerous and she wanted to show that to all the people watching her. When Gilaan handed her her the mask, she snapped it to her belt and entered the outer cave without it. Gilaan showed no reaction, she even kept her lines under control but Inji knew that she was furious.

She turned and waved once at the crowd below. A loud cheer rose from them, urging her on. She stepped into the outer cave and helped Gilaan and Heon through the opening. The others followed and the outer cave began to get cramped with all the equipment they carried through the opening.

Inji still was the only one who didn't wear a mask and she breathed in the dry, cold air full of foreign aromas with glee. She couldn't wait to step out and look at the surface without a mask.

"Put your mask on, you silly woman!" Gilaan hissed next to her.

"I will, I just want to see the sky like this, just once," she pleaded. She grabbed a bag and ran through the curve towards the exit. She knew what to expect, she knew that it was still dark and that she would see the dark sky with bright dots framed by the cave walls. Still, the actual view, the endless space, the vastness of it all made her gasp in astonishment again.

A few more steps taken in a single breath and she stood outside, free in the endlessness of the space around her. She took another deep breath, taking in the foreign scents, sweet, pungent, the air like a long lost friend, familiar but still so very different.

Behind her, the sound of feet shuffling reminded her that she wasn't alone and that they had a lot to do. Gilaan's eyes were angrily bright and she looked sternly at Inji until she finally took the mask from her belt and put it on her face. With a tiny click, the communication system connected and an almost inaudible hum indicated that her speaker was working now. She said tested the speaker ith a few words. Her voice sounded strange, like she listened to herself on the waveat.

She became aware of the silence and turned around. Everyone of the team of eleven people stood in the cave entrance, their faces turned towards the sky. She could see their bright eyes behind the masks, staring at the stars. Some of them were swaying and needed to be supported to not fall over. Nobody said anything.

Binali slowly stepped out of the mouth of the cave and came up to Inji's side. "It's so huge, so far," she whispered.

"I know. We had no idea."

"The mountain ends," Binali stated.

"I told you," Inji said.

"I thought it was impossible. I thought the mountains were everything," Binali slowly turned, stumbling to take everything around her in. "I thought you were exaggerating, that there was more than the mountains."

"We had no idea how huge this planet is," Inji said. "Look at it, look how much room we have, how far we could go."

"I understand now, Inji," Binali said.

"Understand what?"

"Your dream, this dream of yours. I understand now."

Inji sighed. "I wish I could convince everyone like that." For a moment she wished Veelen had accompanied them, just so that she could show him this. She buried that thought deep down.

Setting up the tents took longer than they had anticipated. Working in the overcoats and with the masks needed some adaption from all of them. Three masks had faulty speakers, the troubles they had communicating without them made it clear that the speakers were absolutely essential. They were already missing the language of their luminescence. Having every part of skin covered prevented them from seeing each others lights. It made it sometimes difficult to understand how things were meant and they had to concentrate to use descriptive words to convey their meaning.

Inji was pulling a tarp tight to the ground when she noticed a commotion going through the group. She looked up to find everyone except her and Gilaan stare towards a bright, greenish line on the horizon. Inji walked over to Gilaan and nudged her. "Look, the sun is coming up."

They both joined the others on the edge of the camp. The darkness was receding, the sky now turned into a new shade of blue and the star lights faded against the light coming up over the horizon. Some of the quarians were holding hands, others were turning away from the light but turned back as curiosity overcame them. Inji decided to calm everyone down.

"That's the sun is coming up," she called out, stepping up to the front. "The sun will come over the horizon and make the surface incredibly bright and hot. We are not in danger but you have to snap the darkglass onto the mask as soon as the light begins to become too much. I also want everyone to retreat under the tarp we mounted up." She noticed fidgeting among the younger students, some seemed to be afraid. She made her lights calming white only to realize that nobody could see them. Instead, she lowered her voice and tried to hold her body in a reassuring way, her hands in front, palms up, her head slightly tilted.

"Don't be afraid. The suits and the dark glass protect us. For this first day we will stay here, under the tarps. We let the power boxes charge and continue to set up the camp. We will measure radiation levels constantly but I assume that the sunlights intensity will decrease by the time the sun is getting closer to the horizon again." She turned to look to the opposite horizon but her view was blocked by the mountains of Gelldre Kah. "By that time we will probably be in the shadow of the mountains again. We can explore our surroundings safely then."

She looked back at the faces of the group, their eyes shining brightly but the faces already hidden under the glare of the light coming up. She wanted to say more, wanted to thank every single one of them for coming with her, for trusting her this much. The words just wouldn't come.

Gilaan appeared at her side, gently placing a hand on her arm before raising her voice towards the group. "I think I speak for everyone when I say: Thank you, Inji'Zora. Thank you for taking us with you on this incredible adventure, for letting us be part of your vision for the future."

Inji's breath hitched before she could answer. "Please, you are all incredibly brave. This is as much your achievement as it is mine. Without all of you," she spread her arms to encompass all of the camp, "none of this would have been possible. Thank you, thank you all so much."

The sun was now halfway over the horizon and Inji searched in her overcoat for the darkglass attachment. All around her, people followed her example, snapping the glass cover to the mask. As the light of the sun spread over the ground, the heat began to make the ground glow. They looked towards the rising sun until they had to turn their heads away. The sun had now passed the horizon and the colors around them changed.

Everything glowed from the heat. Some of the rocks looked like they had quarian lines, glowing in different colors than the rest. Inji took pictures with the pictograph but soon realized that she had to put a darkglass cover over the lense to even see anything on the pictures. Everything they had, with the exception of the energy collectors, was designed for low light. Now, in the harsh light of the sun, most things they had were useless.

The tarps they had planned to use for protection were not thick enough, the first light shining through almost unhindered. The heat from the sun reflected off the ground and blinded them. The heat had a light, just like the shine from a living creature. The tarps didn't provide enough shade and they soon stood in a blinding sea of light. The darkglass and the suits protected them but Inji saw people holding their heads in pain. Her head felt painful too and she longed to close her eyes and hide in familiar darkness.

She noticed that everybody looked at her, waiting for a decision. She sighed, as much as she hated it, they considered her the leader of this project. Squinting her eyes shut, she forced herself to think. As much as she wanted to explore the surface, none of them were used to the light. They needed to adapt.

She made them move back into the shade of the outer cave. The sunlight licked inside through the opening but it was noticeably colder and darker. Inji heard relieved sighs all around her. Nervous energy was still bouncing around in the group but as the headaches receded, the mood improved.

The more adventurous of the group threw over a piece of thick cloth and explored the area for as long as they could stand the light. Inji realized the she had underestimated the effects the sunlight would have.

Inji looked around, she couldn't see the faces of her friends and colleagues and that confused her for a moment. But she could interpret the body language well enough to recognize the exhaustion of everyone.

"Maybe we should use this time to take a break," she said, "we all worked a long time to get everything ready. The sunlight is too bright for us anyway, so we stay in the shade to rest for now and wait for the radiation intensity to lessen."

They moved further into the shade, relaxing in the calming darkness. Inji thought about snapping the dark glass off but decided against it. Even in the relative darkness of the entrance cave, she could still see the glow of heat coming in from the outside. Heon kept staring at his spectrometer.

"The intensity is unbelieveable, the level of radiation is higher than any quarian has ever recorded I'm sure." He kept scribbling notes on a slate, drawing and redrawing graphs. Gilaan gently let him further inside the shade but left him to his mumblings.

After a while people began to doze off, some even started snoring loudly behind their masks. Inji had claimed a spot just outside of the bright edge of sunlight that came inside through the gaping mouth of light. The ground was hard and the sand caused a strange, shifting sensation when she sat down. Leaning her back against the rocks calmed her, the rocks feeling familiar even though they were much warmer than what she was used to. At home, warmth like this would have indicated geothermal activity.

She breathed in deeply; even filtered, the air had an unusual spice to it. The tension of the last few weeks slowly fell off her, tension carried over from countless nights of too little sleep. During the day cycle she had rallied support and argued with the finance committee and after that she had overseen the construction of the suits and masks. Most of time, she had fallen asleep in some corner of whatever cabin she happened to be in, huddled in a blanket that a kind soul had thrown over her. Most of the time it was probably Gilaan.

She had not seen Veelen much during that time, he was avoiding her or maybe she was avoiding him. She decided not to think about it. At least he did not pull the funding and they managed to convince two more mayors to support the project with resources. Veelen never attended the committee sessions anymore but he also did not openly oppose the project. Maybe he actually wanted to see results from it. Or maybe he didn't want to hurt her more. The latter was probably just wishful thinking on her part.

The most difficult part of this first move to the surface had been the suits. The breathing masks were surprisingly easy and fast to make, the base form had been in use for years already and only needed the adjustment of the darkglass snap-on and the receiver-speaker communication unit. People donated old waveats for the components like the speakers or the wave-receivers.

But the suits needed so much fabric, it was difficult to find enough and sewing them took a lot of time. The head seamstress, a resolute woman that showed up one day and took the sewing under her iron-hard leadership, simplified the design to speed up production. She made the suits more loose fitting, so that the same size could fit most quarians. And she made the seams with wider stitches and some parts just overlapping without stitches. That way the suits were not airtight but offered enough protection against the sun. It was a compromise they had to make to get everything done on time.

The amount of tremors had increased in the last weeks, one quake almost destroying a quarter of the masks that were already done. The increased frequency of tremors shaking the caves had given them an influx of support and many helping hands. In a cynical way, the mountains had been much more successful in convincing the quarians to turn to the surface than the movement.

Inji woke up with a start and for a moment, she didn't know where she was. The light around her seemed to be at a comfortable level and she wondered if she had gotten used to it or if the sun had already begun to sink below the horizon. She was alone in the cave entrance and the sound of constructions could be heard outside. People were talking to each other, their voices slightly distorted by the speakers. She listened to it for a while, listening for undertones of fear. But there were only short shouts of busy orders or happy chatting.

She relaxed, only now realizing how much she had feared that people would panic or hate her for this adventure.

Outside, the camp had grown. The individual tents were connected with tarp to provide cover between the tents. It almost looked like a city.

Wind had come up while she slept, carrying sand with it that peppered the glass of her mask. The camp had a fabric wall put up to the side where the wind came from, probably to protect from the sand. She stepped behind it, ducking her head under a low hanging tarp. Cables were criss crossing along ground, connecting the power boxes to the collector cells on the outside. Off to the side, protected by a heavy piece of tarp hanging down, she found the power cells and Heon kneeling between them. He was reading data off his instrument.

Not being able to see his lines was confusing but she thought that he looked tense.

"Is everything alright?" she asked, kneeling down beside him. He turned to her and she could just make out the light of his eyes and a few faint lines behind the darkglass.

"Hey, you finally woke up!" There was a smile in his voice and Inji was instantly relieved. There were so many things that could go wrong, everything made her nervous.

Heon turned back to his instrument. It looked like a spectrometer but he had combined it with some other things. Inji tried to figure out what he was looking at.

He angled the display towards her. "The power boxes get hot. Not too hot yet but we have to watch it. I underestimated the temperature changes out here."

"There are a lot of things I didn't anticipate. Like the glow of the hot ground, how harsh that is for our eyes or the sand with the wind..." Inji sighed. She had not thought this through at all.

"And that is fine!" Heon pulled her out of her depressing thoughts. "You had a whole team of scientists working with you and no one has anticipated everything that can happen out here. Nobody can, not even you!"

"That's not what I..."

"Yes, I know, but I also know you and you are berating yourself again for not anticipating every little thing out here." He gave her a little bump on her arm. "We will adapt and we will solve the problems along the way." He poured some water from a bottle on a rag and wrapped it around a powerbox. After a few seconds watching his readouts, he straightened his back and said, "Temperature is dropping. We just need to cool them a bit." He turned to Inji, his eyes big bright spots behind his mask. "I'll find a way to cool them."

"Have we found water?"

"The explorers have not started yet. They wanted to wait for the temperature dropping and also for you to wake up."

Inji felt her lines flicker in embarrassment and was kind of glad that Heon could not see them. "Well, I'm up now, we should get going."

She stroked over Heon's covered arm and left him with his powerboxes to look for her explorers.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was written for NaNoWriMo 2013. The chapter you see here is the last I had fully written, the rest is just notes so far. I'm working on it but I can't promise how quick I will be with it. 
> 
> This fic is a labor of love (it has to be, it's not like a lot of people read it), the closest I was to writing original fiction back in 2013. A lot has happened in the mean time, I'm working on original fiction now but I will never give up fanfiction and headcanons.
> 
> I'm sorry I didn't let this beta read or getting edited, I just didn't feel like subjecting someone to that kind of work for this little thing.
> 
> Thank you for reading, there's only a few of us. Come back soon!


End file.
